Adventures in babysitting
Tacy asked me last week, “Does a babysitter HAVE to say yes when you ask them to babysit?”
I had to laugh as I explained that no, in fact, babysitters are free to turn down job offers. “I can’t FORCE anyone to watch you kids,” I told her. “If I don’t pay them enough or if you terrorize them, they’ll probably say no the next time I call and ask them to babysit.”
I feel pretty fortunate that every time we’ve needed a babysitter, I’ve had plenty of phone numbers at hand. And while there have been a few sitters that I’ve bumped to third or fourth string, I haven’t yet had a sitter turn me down because my kids were too much of a handful.
My poor mother wasn’t quite so lucky.
Now, of course it wasn’t ME who drove away our babysitters; I was a model child who only wanted to play double solitaire and the occasional game of I Doubt It – otherwise known as Bullshit. The second-worst thing I ever did was laugh at my brother’s antics, like when he taunted our favorite babysitter for hitting puberty: “Eleanor has hair on her vagina! Eleanor has hair on her vagina!”
Never mind that his description was inaccurate and based solely on hearsay, it’s a wonder that Eleanor kept coming back to babysit for us – every day for a whole summer while my mother worked part-time. But she did.
In retrospect, I understand why she stuck with us. We may have been pains in the ass – rather, my brother was – but we were oddly entertaining.
Likewise, she was a little offbeat herself. She could burp repeatedly, which fascinated both my brother and me, and she taught us the diarrhea song (cha cha cha). She told us about how she wanted to be a Bobby Soccer but didn’t make it, and admitted that she made her boyfriend cry when she broke up with him. She brought board games with her the first few times she babysat, but soon she taught me to play cards. All three of us would play together by wrapping up one person in a blanket while the other two took the opposite ends and dragged the makeshift burrito around the house.
I think the closest we ever came to driving away Eleanor was also the time that my mother came closest to bumping her to third string. It was the time that I did the worst thing I’ve ever done with a babysitter present.
I had gone downtown with Granny the weekend before, and she’d bought me candy on the first floor of Rikes. Instead of spearmint leaves like usual, this time I’d chosen chocolate covered honeycomb chips, and they were in a small white bag in the refrigerator. My brother took the bag out of the refrigerator and raced upstairs with it, waving it at me as he passed.
Incensed, I gave chase and tore after him – around the corner, down the hallway, and up the stairs where he’d already slammed the door to his room. He and my special candy were in there alone, and I was sure that he wasn’t even EATING the candy but probably smashing it on the desk so that it would be RUINED, my special candy would be GONE just because he wanted to make me MAD and he had made me mad TOO MANY times before and he was NOT going to get away with it THIS time!
So I began pounding on the door. When he didn’t open up promptly, I began kicking it as well.
CRUNCH
As that last kick connected with the hollow paneled door, it gave way and a small oval – the size of a ten year old’s sneaker toe – detached as if it were punched out like one of the paper dolls Granny used to buy for me.
Suddenly my special candy didn’t matter. My fury at my brother evaporated. All I wanted was to take back that last kick.
We all – Eleanor included – agreed not to tell my mother.
Of course, two days later my mother was vacuuming the stairs and at the second stair from the top found herself at eye level with that toe-shaped hole and shouted, “What the HELL happened HERE?!”
There really wasn’t any good cover-up that didn’t involve deliberate kicking, so I couldn’t even get creative with my explanation. He took my stuff, he wouldn’t come out, I was mad, I was bad, end of story.
Surprisingly though, I was more concerned about whether my mother would continue to allow Eleanor to babysit us than about my own punishment. In the forty-eight hours leading up to her discovery of the hole – really, I can’t believe it took her forty-eight hours; geez Mother, how about some attention to detail? – I worried more over the consequences for Eleanor than the consequences for me.
Eleanor remained our first-string babysitter that summer. I have no idea whether she might have been put on disciplinary probation or given any other sort of talking-to by my mother, but I certainly never kicked another hole in my brother’s door.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:57 am
I’ll never forget the dim-bulb babysitter who was never invited back after I suggested we microwave popsicles to make slushees.
Why she took hair-brained recipe ideas from a 6 year old is beyond me, but my mom was incensed to find her beloved microwave spackled with bright red goo.
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April 22nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
But, but… what happened to the candy?
:p
We had a Nan who wasn’t a blood relation but was closer to us than any of them were. She let me dress up my little brother, who I desperately wanted to be a little sister, in dresses and take pictures. Now that I have a little one of my own, I really wish she were still alive to chat with about things…
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April 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 am
It’s hard out there for a babysitter, trying to be cool enough so the kids like her and simultaneously mature enough so the parents like her too!
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April 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 am
Whereas one time when my sister pissed me off, I waited until she was practicing her clarinet. Then I shoved it upward as hard as I could so that the reed basically scraped off the roof of her mouth. She’d blown that clarinet in my ear and I felt completely justified.
Between the havoc and the screaming and the BLEEDING, OH LORD, it is a miracle that the babysitter wasn’t scared off.
Goodness knows we’d scared off several others. Lol.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I actually never had a babysitter outside of the family when I was growing up. Lest you think that made us better behaved, I will tell you that I too kicked in a hollow-core door. My sister was on the other side!
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April 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
I’ve never kicked a hole in a door but I have had those “oh sh!t!” moments. Not so fun.
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