I stopped doing baby-sitting the year I turned eighteen. After all, I had a steady job by then and was making reasonable money and the sitting tended to cut into my now limited spare time. I passed all my regulars onto a couple of younger girls and cheerfully wiped my hands on the whole messy business.
Which is why it came as a slight shock to find myself sitting for Brian and Marie one night. It was a Friday night and normally I'd have been out, but the boyfriend was down with the flu and I couldn't be bothered going out by myself. Then Marie rang, looking for an emergency sitter. It seemed the flu was rather prevalent, right then, and her normal sitter and her backup were both down with it. Could I please, please, please, pretty please, fill in?
So with nothing else to do I found myself around at Brian and Marie's place, watching the kids. Really, I should say watching TV. The kids had gone down around eight and both of them just zonked right out. There was nothing for me to do from that point on, except to watch the idiot box and wait for Brian and Marie to come home.
The situation changed around nine o'clock. I heard the key in the door and was mildly surprised as Marie had indicated that they'd be out quite late. I was even more surprised when Andrew, Brian's younger brother came strolling in. He actually lives interstate, but when he's in town he always stays with his brother. I just hadn't realised that he was in town right now.
Andrew looked at me, snapped his fingers a couple of times and then said, "Brenda, right? You used to sit for Brian and Marie, but I haven't seen you for a couple of years."
I was quite flattered that he actually remembered my name. He was about four years older than me and I'd had a bit of a crush on him when I was around sixteen, but he'd never even seemed to notice me. Apparently he had, at least, well enough to remember my name.
I nodded.
"Marie and Brian have gone out and I'm the emergency babysitter," I told him cheerfully. "The kids are now sleeping and I'm just relaxing watching the tellie. Ah, if you're in for the rest of the night I can go home and leave the kids with you."
"No!" he said, very quickly. "If the little monsters wake up and find me here they'll never go back to bed. Better by far if you're available. Besides, I might go out again."
That was fine by me. It wasn't as though I'd be doing anything when I got home but watch TV there. At least here I was getting paid to watch it. I settled down to continue watching while Andrew settled onto one of the lounge chairs.
After a while, a very short while, Andrew got up and just prowled around. He seemed rather restless. He sat again and I asked him if he'd like me to make some coffee.
"Coffee," He said. "Good idea. But you sit there. I'll make it."
He shot through to the kitchen and returned a little while later with coffee. We drank it and chatted a little, him sounding me out about what I'd been doing since he last saw me and me quizzing him in a similar manner. Coffee gone I settled back to watching TV and Andrew settled back to prowling around.
I found that having Andrew prowling back and forth while I tried to watch TV was rather disconcerting. Or to be more explicit, he was getting on my nerves.
"Um, Andrew," I ventured, "if you want to go out feel free to do so. Don't feel that you need to stay and keep me company."
Andrew gave a quick laugh.
"Getting on your nerves, am I?" he asked. "No need to deny it. Marie also gets bit irritated when I get restless like this. The trouble is I don't really feel like going out. I do have one idea. This is just a suggestion, but why don't you take your panties off?"
I bridled at that. I mean, I've had guys make indecent suggestions before and have even been persuaded to go along with a couple of those suggestions, but I don't think I've ever been so crudely propositioned. I was about to tell Andrew just what he could do with his suggestion when he laughed and flapped his hands at me.
"Wait a moment," he said quickly. "That didn't come out quite the way I intended. I'm not trying to suggest anything wrong. Let me explain."
So I shut up and listened.
"As you may know, I'm currently doing a psychology course. One of our assignments is to put someone into a slightly unusual situation and see how rapidly they adjust to the change. We're not supposed to put someone into a radically different situation but just make a minor change to their environment. I thought that if you continued to watch TV, but without your panties, it would count as a minor change. You're still quite adequately covered. The only difference is that you're now aware that you have no panties. I have to note how fast the change becomes the new standard. That is, how fast do you go from an uncomfortable awareness of the change to forgetting about it, as it is the new norm? Get it?"
Got it. He wasn't propositioning me but using me for a school assignment. How flattering. I considered the issue. Would it really matter if I took my panties off? After all, he wasn't propositioning me, just observing. My dress was knee length, so he wasn't going to see anything, even if I forgot about the panties and bent over.
I shrugged.
"OK," I said, and I probably sounded a bit dubious. This was because I was. "But they go straight back on when Brian and Marie get home."
