This is hardly the right word for looking after a 7-year-old grandson in the school holidays, but kidsitting or boysitting just doesn't sound right.
Rowan is an irritably smart child to look after. I see through him easily.
He attended a gifted kids school in Chicago, but gifted schmifted, he can't put one over me.
I have been on this planet far too long to fall for his conversational calumny.
I made a pact with my inner self last week not to concede him an inch.
Our first trip into town began inevitably at the Sally Army shop.
I told him money was tight for this wonderful emporium, but he pointed at the searing Dunedin sun bearing down almost violently from above, and so I agreed to a fetching sun hat and cool dude ski goggles to get him into the city without suffering sunstroke.
Two dollars each.
But 7-year-olds require instant gratification, and the concepts of tomorrow and absentee bids were mercifully beyond his gifted brain.
We went next to the Hospice Shop, where he found a staggeringly beautiful helicopter made from Coca-Cola cans.
I said there was two dollars left for the day, unless it was food, where I had budgeted for 25 times that, because a boy has to eat; I didn't want him passing out on me.
I mentioned the Coke helicopter was perhaps the finest piece of engineering I had seen since I was at MOMA in New York in 2000 and congratulated him on his finding ability.
How much, I inquired. Two dollars, he replied.
So I plumped the chopper down on the counter with a two-dollar coin.
It is tautologous to reveal what the thing actually cost, but stickers never lie, and when the kind shop woman pointed at the sticker that didn't say two dollars, I resignedly plonkered the balance down.
I told you he was gifted.
We got some great looks in the main street with the Coke helicopter.
Rowan told strangers he had made it himself, his face as pure as pavlova.
The helicopter was missing a wing, but I cut up a Coke can back home (yes I poured the Coke down the sink), Rowan added some tiny strips as guns, and we had a toy worthy of Toitu.
What is it with boys and weapons?
Rowan found a lovely little pencil and writing set in one of our drawers and asked if he could have it. I was touched.
Perhaps, I wondered, he wanted to write a small poem or draw a flower.
A few minutes later I watched incredulously as he stabbed a large sheet of packing cardboard to death with the pencil, howling war cries surprisingly close to those of the American Sioux Indian.
On Thursday, Rowan announced he would like to buy a Trash Pack toy.
There were three kinds in the shop; he wanted the dearest at $19.99.
Totally out of the question, I said, I am a two-dollar man, I would barely spend $19.99 on pleasure in three months.
His face then became gifted and he told me his friend at school had 92 of them, whereas he had only 9.
He produced $10 of his own, and added there was a 20% discount on all toys that day.
Then, using a gifted hand to back up the sad mournful gifted face, he began to put the Trash Pack back, muttering how unreasonable it was expecting me to fund the extra six dollars.
But no rich kid at school makes a monkey out of me.
I snatched the eight-piece Trash Pack from Rowan's tiny deprived gifted hands, and went straight to the counter.
You have to be strong with 7-year-olds.
You can't let them away with stuff or they will grow up thinking adults are stupid, as pliable as plasticine.
Stick to your guns, even if they are made out of wafer-thin Coke cans, and, most important, when you are babysitting, make sure it isn't you who is the baby.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
