DO NOT allow strangers into the house unless your employer specifically informs you that they want you and their children to be brutally murdered.
DO NOT tell a caller that you are the babysitter alone with children. Mentioning children can often be a turnoff for potential suitors. Focus instead on your articles of clothing, mentioning how they feel on your sensitive, downy young skin.
DO bring items to entertain the children with, like coloring books, colored paper, color markers, tape, board games, puppets, pens, old newspapers, tacks, dirt, aerosol-spray cans, mail, Tabasco sauce, malt liquor, gasoline, bleach, currants, fast-food wrappers, and anything else you can grab ahold of. Lay these items in a pile in the center of the room and watch as the imagination of children takes hold. Feel free to use this time to rifle through their parents’ dresser drawers, or to masturbate vigorously in the bathroom, knowing someone could burst in at any time, thus adding to the level of danger.
DO NOT go outside to investigate suspicious noises or activities. Any suspicious noise should immediately be responded to with as much buckshot as you can fire through the front doorway, followed by a confident, “How you friggin’ like me now, Osama?”
DO keep matches locked away from children. Be sure to let them know that you are doing this only because matches have magical properties that give their user the power to cast any object aflame, like a wizard.
DO NOT leave a child alone in a bathtub, unless the call is very very important, like from your boyfriend.
DO NOT allow the children under your care to place garbage bags over their heads, unless you have poked a hole in the top of the bag and you are certain you will be back from your friend’s place in under ten minutes.
DO keep portable heaters away from play areas, curtains and furniture. Keep portable heaters close to the children at all times, so that you can be assured they are always warm and toasty.
DO NOT allow children to hide in the refrigerator for any reason. Pick one child at random and place them in the refrigerator for at least 40 minutes, to illustrate the dangers inherent in this activity.
DO show children how to stop, drop and roll in case their clothes catch on fire. Remind them that their sudden combustion is a very real possibility, and should be feared at all times. Add that it often happens as a child is falling asleep.
