I once babysat a kid whose mom warned me to keep an eye on her because if she got the chance she’d eat a stick of butter. I didn’t take it literally. I thought “she’ll eat a stick of butter” was metaphorical for “she’ll get into everything.” The girl was three after all. But no. Her mother was serious. After I tucked the kid into bed I walked downstairs to watch TV and heard someone in the kitchen. There she was in the light of the refrigerator, eating a stick of butter like a pickle.

You ever wonder about kids you used to babysit? I haven’t thought about Butter Girl in a long time, but the other day I wondered where that kid is now. I was about ten years older than her, so she must be in her thirties. Is she still really into dairy? Has she gotten better at sneaking around and doing whatever she wants without getting caught? Because she was lousy at it when she was three.

I bet she stopped eating hunks of butter. For a while, anyway. Mothers and babysitters like me shamed her into eating what she really wanted for a while, but then maybe when she finally moved out on her own, and had the whole place to herself, and it was her apartment, and her butter that she bought with her own money, she did whatever in the Jiminy Crickets that she wanted with it.

Kind of like me when I got out on my own and realized I could have breakfast whenever I wanted. Not morning? Who cared! Not my momma because she wasn’t there! Take off socks and leave them on the floor? Of course. Cake BEFORE dinner? Why, yes. The sweeping freedom of my adult life was diet and housekeeping anarchy.

But maybe the kid has long since matured past that. Perhaps she’s really into brie, the posh equivalent of a stick of butter. I don’t know. I’m no longer paid five dollars an hour to watch her.

Incidentally, sometimes I still eat the cake before dinner. I leave my socks everywhere. Don’t tell my mom.