At some point during my early teens, my friend Nick somehow got a babysitting job that we knew in advance would last only one day. It was summer and we were bored, so our friend Eddie and I showed up at some point during the afternoon. I don’t remember anything about the kid, but they had a really big TV. The house was near the library.

We’d been there maybe an hour when Eddie hurled a frisbee across the room as hard as he could and hit me directly in the teeth. My mouth started bleeding pretty badly, trickling down my chin and onto my shirt. My reaction to this, for a reason that’s probably only clear to 13 year-olds in strangers’ houses, was to streak some of the blood down my nose and under my eyes.

This arrangement continued long enough for the dried blood to start to crackle and fall off my face. Some time around then, the video for Pizzicato Five’s “Playboy Playgirl” came on the giant television and we lost our minds, flipping the coffee table and opening mail and throwing chips all over the entire house. At some point near the song’s end, the child’s mother came home. She and I made eye contact for an instant before Eddie and I ran away, getting on our bikes and probably going to the nearby McDonald’s. I don’t remember if Nick experienced any fallout, but he probably didn’t. Those were freer times, when you could still open up someone else’s electric bill and Japanese lounge bands still got their videos shown on American television.

Two things about this story that bother me:

1) At no point throughout this story can I account for the whereabouts or well-being of the child being babysat.

2) Nor can I account for why Pizzicato Five acted as an insane psychological trigger. Good song, though.