Nanny Dearest Not So Much

My current read, Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen, is a collection of short stories. Most/all of the stories have sent me to the dictionary several times, which is a humbling, albeit annoying, occurrence.

One story, "Nanny Dearest," resonated with me, as strange as the actual tale was. It features a family with a live-in nanny who also writes. One day the wife finds the nanny's writing, specifically a manuscript for a book about the family. It details awful habits and embarrassing stories; in one section the nanny quotes the husband and wife as they insult friends and neighbors. The wife wants to fire her on the spot, but the husband persuades her not to, as that wouldn't stop the nanny from writing/publishing. Instead, he plans to get rid of her by poisoning her tea. Unfortunately for him, he gets a little drunk before doing this and ends up drinking the poison himself. The story ends with the nanny calling an ambulance for the husband and handing over a letter of resignation, saying nannying bored her and that she also gave up writing her book as the family is "too creepy to hold the interest of any reader with an IQ in the normal range." She then runs off with a millionaire.

Okay, so not exactly my experience as a nanny/house manager, but maybe a super exaggerated caricature of things. I don't live with my family, even though it sometimes feels that way, and even though I write a lot about work, I would never throw my family under the bus the way the fictional nanny does, not that there's reason to do so in the first place. And who knows if I would ever drop everything and run off with a millionaire; the opportunity to do so hasn't presented itself so far...