Babysitting 1

      When I was in high school, there were babysitting jobs on Saturday nights. I got paid fifty cents an hour. Of those earnings, I tithed ten percent to the church – one of the messages that sank in after all those Sundays of attendance at Mass. And at one point, I had saved up $40 and bought a typewriter – my class reports and my college term papers were finalized on that typewriter. I still had it after a few years of marriage – but gave it away during one of our moves, having learned, but never mastered, computer word processing by then.

     There are many babysitting stories I could tell – like the family with three kids whose names all started with the same letter. The Mom and Dad liked to party at the Moose Club on Saturday nights – one night they did not come home! In the morning, I called another babysitter who came to the house so I could go home – the Mom and Dad arrived later in the morning - they were fine, just partied late – she called and apologized, might have even given me some extra money. A few years later they divorced – somehow I always think the Moose Club was to blame. I loved their kids – wish I knew what they are doing now.

     There was a family I only sat for once – they had a regular sitter and I was called in an emergency. There was a toddler who still slept in a crib and an older sister, maybe two older sisters. It was time for bed and the toddler fussed and fussed. The sister explained that the little one got a bottle at bedtime – so I put some milk in a bottle and gave it to the toddler in the crib. He rejected the bottle and continued to fuss. I looked at the sisters and asked if they knew what was wrong. “He gets Coke in his bedtime bottle!” I thought they were pulling a fast one on me – I was not going to give this child Coca Cola in a bottle! But they looked so sincere, and the toddler was fussing. After much hesitancy, I decided to give him the Coke. He immediately settled down. When Mom came home, I blurted out an apology about the bottle, but Mom said she should have explained that before she left – the child did indeed get a bottle with Coke at bedtime!

     I also vividly remember that night because Lent had just started, and I had given up TV for Lent – the kids were watching The Amazing Mr. Limpet – I kept averting my eyes, but I mostly saw the whole thing and felt guilty. Breaking my promise of no-TV with a Don Knotts movie and giving a child a bottle with Coke to go to bed with – made me feel like there was no hope for me as an adult – no hope whatsoever!

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