Home Alone

     This is a story that was first written in 2009 after Amanda's college graduation celebration.

     As we chatted and swapped stories, suddenly it turned into confession time – and the rules the girls were supposed to have followed when they were home alone as kids.

     It was the summer when Sarah had turned ten and Amanda was seven, 1994, that the experiment was tried to let the girls stay home alone all day while I worked. If all went well, then we could say goodbye to daycare. But if there were any problems, then we would have to make different arrangements – probably back to daycare. The girls were motivated to make the experiment work! And they did – or so I thought.

Bodie class of 2009 and Goober

     I had several rules that Goober and Bodie were supposed to follow when home alone. The only ones I remembered that college graduation day in 2009 were: one hour of television per day maximum, clean up after themselves in the kitchen, no answering the door to anyone, and take turns cleaning the litter box every day. The girls remembered a lot more rules and recited this list: one hour or less of tv per day, practice piano at least 30 minutes each per day; read for one hour a day; 1 hour or less of video games per day; one glass of soda maximum per daughter per day; no eating or drinking in Mom's bedroom.

     Have you noticed the omitted rules of cleaning up after themselves in the kitchen and doing the litter box daily?

     And then they confessed:

     “We watched more than one hour of television every day.”

     “We ate in your bedroom while watching the more than one hour of television every day.”

     “When one of us practiced piano, the other would read out loud for ½ hour – and listening counted as reading – so piano practicing and reading got done at the same time.”

     “Because we cheated on the television rule, we never went more than one hour each on the video game playing rule.”

     “You used to yell 'no airborne objects!' if toys began to fly around when you were home; but since you weren't home to yell, we played bouncy balls in the kitchen – the floor was nice for bouncing – and the balls flew so high and hit things and we knew you really would not like that if you knew we were doing it. Did you find some bouncy balls when you put in the new refrigerator and stove this past winter? How about some little race cars?”

    And so I asked, “how much television do you remember watching every day? Three hours? Four?” (I would have watched all day if it had been me!)

    “There were three shows that we liked. So one and one half hours at lunchtime. And when we ate lunch in your bedroom, we used the big puzzle boards that we had to put our food and drink on. We never left any sign of having eaten in your room!”

     They confessed to on extra half hour of TV a day and cleaning up after themselves after eating in my bedroom!

     “Did you ever answer the door if someone knocked or rang the bell?”

     “Oh no, Mom, we would never have done that!”

     “And did you kill each other?”

     “No.”

     “And now you know. None of the other rules counted for anything at all. I could attempt to set lofty rules about tv and video games and reading and piano – but all that really really mattered was that you were safe.”

     And then I added, “Did you jump on the couch?”

     “No Mom, just the bouncy ball thing!”

     That's funny because jumping on the couch was the first thing I did when left alone after my Mom went back to work oh so many decades ago!

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