I fell somehow into the old haggle of part-time babysitting when I was a pre-teen; it was a stupid idea, I hated kids like Tibult hated hell and all Montagues. Besides the quirst for money to buy crystals and miniature wilderbeasts, I can't remember my motivation for getting into the business, but after having a weird dream about driving a motocycle into a convenience store made of sand in Morocco, I suddenly remembered exactly how I got OUT of the business; in two words, Russian Roulette.
It was my first ever job, besides selling old toys at the weekly town market, which I was too embarassed to ask "real' money for. I took care of two kids, a boy and girl whose names I can't remember. She was 6 and he was 8; I liked the boy much better, for he was clever, he didn't bitch and moan for hours on end, and he wasn't grasping or manipulative, which the girl, despite her innocent youth, was already well on her way to honing to a fine art. Being only eleven myself, I couldn't do anything terribly useful like cook dinner, drive, go shopping, or "lay down the law", so my duties, for which I was paid 2$ an hour, consisted mainly of playing with them and making sure they didn't get into any disasterous predicaments.
Earlier that year, I had begun volunteering away my lunch hours at Fernwood elementary answering phones for the office, all in a bid to forge some of the human self-esteem as I had spent much of my tormented childhood torment being a wolf, complete with running on all fours and biting people I didn't like. Parents calling the school had even praised my "polite manner" to the secretaries, and I was well on my way to securing my place in PeopleLand; taking care of little people seemed like the next logical step.
Usually, it went well. We watched TV (staple diet for teen babysitters), wrestled, played GI Joes and Dollies in equal measure, and then one day, well what can I say, I guess we got bored. The boy had recently gotten a cap gun for a present, and I had recently watched some manner of violent film (my very first film was 'LadyHawke', and my very favourite was "Robocop'), and somehow I ended up mentioning the two words that destroyed my babysitting career: Russian roulette. I've never been very good at withholding information, and when the doeey brown eyes of the children gleamed with interest as they asked "Russian rooolit? What's that?" I had no chance but to truthfully reply. The pieces of the puzzle all came blurring together as little-she went to grab her cabbage patch kids, and we'd see who was still smiling by the last shot. I remember very calmly explaining that in real life, Russian roulette was a very serious thing, and it killed people, and that in our gaming fun, we must understand the seriousness of the what we were doing, if it had been real life and all, but they just laughed and soon the tension and mystery of whose unlucky brains will paint the walls of the Kremlin tonite degenerated into shooting all the dolls in the head and then kicking them against the side of the garage.
That was enough to make me suitably distressed and I called an end to the activity and packed the two back inside, cursing myself for allowing it happen in the first place. Then I became extremely afraid: they were going to tell their parents, and I was going to be held liable for corrupting their fragile little minds, and possibly turning them into future homicidal maniacs!
I was always afraid shit was going to come pouring down on my head for everything I did back then: once, I sung "Under the Bridge" at campfire during presentations night, only I didn't remember the words, so I made up some new ones. I laid the rest of night waking, worried that the Chili Peppers were going to hear about my little copyright infrigement and Antony Ketis was going to decend down from California and smack the perm right out of my poofy 90's do'. So it was with this; I pictured the police showing up a my house some days after the incident with the news that one or both of the kids had shot each other, and I was being held cupable. I could have pissed myself with fear, except that didn't mean much at the time, cause i was always pissing myself over one thing or another.
The parents arrived home shortly after, and the little girl, no doubt smelling my fear on the wind, immediately broke into the tale of the wonderful fun they'd had playing the new game Charles taught them. I became delerious with dread and babbled some apology coupled with how I told them it was a serious matter, and oh god, please don't tell my mom. She drove me home in silence and simply never called to ask me to babysit ever again. And I never did. I think I saw her once in Thriftys two years later and hid behind the instant noodles to avoid the piercing gaze of her wandering eye.
Sometimes I think upon these things when I am considering what kind of parent I want to be to my eventual adopted child/ren. I'd like to be straight forward and honest about all things, because I hate hearing people bullshit to their kids: it only turns them into bullshitters themselves. However, I suppose a certain amount of restraint is in order to accomodate their level of understanding of the world. I myself was probably exposed to too much too quickly: I remember being terrified watching Harrison Ford screw his secretary in Presumed Innocent, thinking 'how could you do it, Han?". I was only 9 and sex is scary at that age...mind you I had no trouble watching that German terrorist get an icicle through the eye in Die Hard 2, which just goes to show again how ass-backwards our sensitivies are.
Still, if I can somehow manage to avoid playing potentially fatal games direct from the International Manual of Practical Tortures with children, I should make a damn fine mommy.
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