UPFRONT:AS I TYPE THIS, I am babysitting. It is clearly the cushiest of numbers. If I were driving a taxi or mopping a floor, typing this column might be a multitask too far. But typing while babysitting? A cinch.
To clarify: it does depend on the baby. This is a job of extremes: baby already in bed and lost to slumber for the night? Easy street. Why, the house is yours, the television choices unchallenged, the goodies there for your delectation and the couch for lounging upon with the decadence that comes from getting paid for idling. You could, in fact, do this one in your sleep. The best part is, the parents come home, all grateful and guilty, and practically press their largesse upon you while thanking you profusely for eating their food, depreciating their furniture and enjoying their central heating.
Would that it were always so. One alternative scenario involves baby peacefully snoring as proud parents tiptoe out only to wake up screaming blue murder as soon as the car pulls out the drive. This is where you really earn those three chocolate chip bikkies and the free cup of tea. I won’t even go into the far too common scenario where the children are actually awake when you arrive and it becomes part of your job description to shoo the little blighters to sleep even though they know full well that you are not their mother, but some stand-in with absolutely no jurisdiction. And boy will they milk it. Because there’s nothing like going toe-to-toe with a three-year-old who is not done watching Barney no matter what damn time it is.
Cheeky parents, you might say. Taking advantage. Believe you me, I’ve seen it all. Growing up with two sisters in a neighbourhood of toddlers, we were much in demand as babysitters in our teenage years. Hell, I was working the babysitting circuit before I was out of braces. And I don’t mind telling you I have babysitting references coming out the wazoo at this point. Just FYI.
So I know an easy gig when I see one. And as a teenage girl, I could have told you the houses worth stopping in on and those to avoid. Number 10? Odd children, cold house, but an unrivalled biscuit collection. The Brogans? Apparently notional children that never made an appearance, but they only have RTÉ1 and 2 on the telly.
The telly was all-important, and the babysitting wish list usually put a good choice of channels up there with decent snacks – I’m talking real chocolate, and lots of it – children that were either fun to hang out with or out for the count, and a comfy sofa. Still, the one thing that could outweigh all other considerations was money.
Back in the day, this amounted to at least a pound an hour. To make the gig worthwhile, you wanted the kind of parents who asked you to be there early, plopped you down in front of the telly, and then spent the next hour and a half a running around the house with mascara wands looking for their keys. This was ideal: you weren’t on duty until the paros left the house, but by God you were on the clock. You could also assume that such time-management issues would apply at the other end too, and having swore blind they’d be back by midnight, they’d come staggering in at 3am, all apologies and crumpled banknotes. You could make a killing off that kind of drunken generosity.
Those were the gigs we’d fight for among the sisters, and we could spot ’em a mile off. But there was only one babysitting call we’d really tear each other’s hair out for, and that was the one with the handsome dad. To our teenage sensibilities, this guy was cool personified, like MacGyver crossed with Bobby Ewing, but living in our housing estate. Swoon. It’s a tribute to this man’s sex appeal that I cannot to this day recall how well or how badly he paid, nor what kind of snacks were offered up to us lovestruck teens come to mind his children. I just wanted to have his children. And adopt the ones he already had, do something kind but permanent to the mother – herself a charming woman but a clear impediment to eternal happiness – and live happily ever after down the road from our parents with this dreamboat. And then employ one of my sisters to babysit while I went out carousing with him. The fantasies fuelled many a bad television night.
He was, I think, my first real-life older man crush, and I know my sisters were equally smitten: our sudden fervour for babysitting was less an indicator of developing avarice and more our raging hormones. My older man crush was not the only first bequeathed to me by my babysitting jobs. Babysitting was an opportunity to nose through different worlds behind the doors of our otherwise ticky tacky houses, and the treasures unearthed therein have lasted all my life.
It was while babysitting that I first came face to face with a decent vinyl collection, my dad having transferred most of his music to tape in an effort to downsize when his family did the opposite. It was while babysitting that I first listened to Blood on the Tracksby Bob Dylan, and laid belly-down on some thirtysomething's carpet absorbing Leonard Cohen's lyrics for the first time. It was while babysitting that I first ate a muesli bar and first tried meditation, following a book that I plucked from the shelves, though I couldn't make it past the heavy breathing part. And it was while babysitting that I was first treated like the adult I was struggling to make heard at home. Because in the homes of other people, I was in charge, set loose from my own family pecking order and elevated to a position of responsibility unfamiliar to this middle child. It made me feel like a grown-up.
Nowadays, it’s more than a pound an hour they’re getting, I’m told. But being of the age when one’s peers are bearing chisellers all of their own accord, it behoves me to waive my usual fee. Instead, I nose around their houses, watch their tellies, eat their goodies, lounge upon their couches, and palpate their iPods, and all free of charge. It makes me feel like a teenager.
fionamccann@irishtimes.com