babysitting

Tonight, Addie asked me if I knew how she could make some extra money.  I told her that she needed to babysit. 

"Babysit?"

"Yep, you would be good at it, it is fun and you will make a ton of money."

"How is babysitting fun?"

I was the mac daddy of babysitters when I was a teen.  Not only was I fun, I showed up and didn't cancel.

I had one family that was super easy, paid well, always had TAB and let me bring my friend.

Two little girls that went to bed by seven, eight at the latest and it was a piece of cake. 

One particular winter night, the girls and I feel asleep watching television in the parents bed.  Not just asleep, but, deep asleep.  So asleep that when they returned home, I didn't wake up.  Not for anything.  Not for the door bell ringing, not for the phone ringing, not for the horn beeping, nothing.  The homeowners had to break into their own home while I layed fast asleep, in their bed, with their girls.  Horrifying. 

They asked me back.

This time, (I was only 14), I took the plastic baby bottle and put it in the pot to warm up the milk.  It didn't go well.  I melted the bottle.  Ruined the pot.  Horrifying.

They asked me back.

This time, I brought Joan.  The girls went to bed at eight and it was snoop time.  We loved to snoop in medicine cabinets.  Way before Seinfeld, we loved to snoop in the cabinets and check out every beauty product.

This night, there was NAIR.  NAIR, the original, stinky, hair removing product that we never bought.  So there it was, and Joan decided that we should try NAIR on our eyebrows.  We were 14 and starting to "look cool".  So, Joan went first.  She applied the NAIR on the her eyebrows and we waited for the eight minutes.  Eight minutes of stinky cream is better than the  pain of plucking eyebrows.

She started to wipe off the NAIR and she had no eyebrows.  NONE, zilch, zero.  She looked like a camel.  With big eyes.

It was horrifying.  We were 14.  She was moving, never to return to high school again and she was going into hiding.  Worse than that, we were in somebody else's house, they were coming home and now they know we were medicine cabinet snoopers.

The homeowners returned.  I think they were tipsy and they kept looking at Joan.  They stared.

We went to my house for the sleepover.  The next morning, my dad said to me, "what is with Joan, she looks like a camel?" 

It took weeks for those brows to grow  back.

And yes, we got asked back.  And we snooped again.

One time, when I was babysitting the next door neighbor, you could look into their house from the back of our house.  Typically, when I was there, my parents would call be before they went to bed, "night, come in through the basement, be careful."

This particular night, my dad looked down into the house and said to my mom, "what is she watching on television?"

They searched and discovered it was Alfred Hitchcock's, THE BIRDS. 

This time, my dad called me and said, "we are going to bed.   come in through the basement and hey, did you know there are a bunch of birds on the roof?"

I know he died laughing when he saw me sticking my head out the window looking up at the roof.

I don't want to wish my life away, or Addie's, but I can hear her and see her walking down the street from a babysitting job and telling stories. 

Babysitting made me want to be a mom and own a home.


And I wish I could medicine cabinet snoop one more time.