The Babysitter's Here

The doorbell rang promptly at 5:45 and our 16 year old neighbor stepped into the foyer, all sparkling eyes and Loves Baby Soft. I ran around the house in a black dress, sliding in an earring and wiping sweat from my neck, wishing I'd shaved my damn legs.

"My cell number is on the kitchen counter...she needs to eat all her dinner before she has ice cream...we'll be home by 9!"

This was received with a reassuring nod and I felt terrific relief to have found a babysitter who lived right across the street. What luck!

This was the first time we'd left Lily with a sitter since we'd moved to Baton Rouge. And how I loved the convenience of this. Most of the babysitters we'd had in the city needed to rely on an inconvenient assemblage of public transportation to get to us, and I would always pay for a taxi to get them home, especially if I got back late, which I often did.

But having a babysitter on your street, whoa. Here was a sure sign that you've passed through the membrane between clueless-idiot-playing-house and full-fledged-responsible-adult. This was how it was supposed to be. Niiiice.

When I was little, my favorite babysitter, Kate, lived across the street from us. I was so excited when my parents finally decided to get a life and leave us with a sitter. Of course, I immediately understood this to mean that once we'd tricked my little sister, Lisa, into falling asleep, Kate and I would hang out together all night, eating popcorn and drinking soda and watching Fantasy Island because it would be immediately evident that I was way cooler and more grown-up than other six-year-old girls. I assumed that Kate probably would even refuse to take my parents' money at the end of the night, because babysitting me was really more like hanging out with a girlfriend, and could she take me to the mall on Sunday? She really wanted to buy me some Jordache jeans.

OK, it didn't exactly go like that. But I still loved Kate anyway. She was wonderfully kind and patient, and she was the first person out of my immediate family to call me "Kris", as if she had an immediate sisterly familiarity with me. I loved it.

In preparation for Saturday night, I worked for hours on a Lite Brite portrait of Kate (Lite Brite was my current medium, having tired of cray pas and scented markers). Of course I'd never met her, but in my head she looked just like Sandy from Grease, as I expected all teenage girls did.

She didn't end up looking like Sandy, but she had longer hair than anyone I'd ever seen...red and thick, and she let me brush and style it for hours, decorating it with pink and red plastic barrettes and pieces of yarn. She also tolerated all the things Lisa and I did to try and 'entertain' her, including sitting patiently for long stretches while I made my barbies lip synch to "Hopelessly Devoted to You", and "If I can't Have You" (In addition to the Grease soundtrack, the Saturday Night Fever album also got continuous play in our house).

When it was finally time for bed, I fell asleep secure in the knowledge that I'd impressed Kate, that I'd shown her what a mature and interesting kid I really was. I drifted off feeling like I'd nailed it. That was, until I sleepwalked into the bathroom and pulled down my pants and passed out, slumped on the toilet with my pjs around my ankles, which is how Kate found me and had to put me back to bed. Fuck.

When I became a babysitter myself, I realized how easy it was to just completely slack off, and this kind of scared me. I wondered if my babysitters actually had done the things I did when I was responsible for a house full of kids (turning the clock ahead an hour to make them go to bed, having several bowls of ice cream while talking on the phone for hours, falling asleep in front of an R-rated movie). I realized with dismay that probably, that time I woke up and walked in on Kate and her 'friend' on the living floor 'wrestling', that wasn't actually the scenario at all. It's impossible to delve into the complicated mind of a teenager until you are one yourself.

I imagine that, in hindsight, the things I did weren't that bad, however. Though I did have an affinity for drama (I loved removing the 6 month old I babysat from her crib as soon as her parents pulled out of the driveway, clutching her to my chest, rubbing her bald head as I reenacted tearful scenes from movies like Terms of Endearment; I would faux-sob in front of the mirror and pretend to yell at my straying husband to 'Get out! Just leave! How could you do this to us!!!'), and I did like to raid the fridge of my employers once the kids were down for the night, I was a fairly responsible babysitter. I never had any boys over or would even think about drinking or anything really stupid. I was just a normal teenager who did dumb things sometimes.

Which, now that I think about it, is kind of scary, if today's teen babysitters are anything like they were back then. Oh, well. I'll just make sure I hide the matches.