I was the youngest child in my family, by a long shot. My closest sibling was almost a decade older than me. Yeah, I’m one of those.
I was also the youngest among all my cousins. As a consequence, I grew up never spending any time around people younger than myself. In fact, I never held a baby until I was 40 years old. It was one of the first items I checked off my bucket list. The mother was surprised, but the kid was OK with it. Generally my only time around kids has been against my will such as on a plane, in a movie theater or at the teacup ride at Disneyland — just try cutting in front of me, junior.
So it came as a surprise when I was recently asked to babysit. I scratched the side of my head and said, “Babysitting? Isn’t that one of those things they do in the country for fun, you know, like cow tipping?”
I barely remember the neighborhood girl who was hired to watch me as a lad. I can recall a lot of foot stomping, breath holding and general temper tantrums, but other than that, she was pretty good. What does stand out from those days was the time I was finally deemed worthy of not needing a babysitter. I was 14 years old in Tennessee, and my mother gave me $100 and an open account at the local grocery store and promptly drove to Florida for a month-long vacation with my stepfather. As she pulled out of the driveway, I wasn’t entirely convinced she was coming back, but I had $100, and if I spent it carefully it should last until my early 20s, and by then I would surely get another mother.
As they drove off into the distance, I realized this was an opportunity not to be missed. I immediately rode my bike to the grocery store and said, “Garçon, show me to your finest grape Nehi.” That night’s dinner featured hors d’oeuvres of Pop Rocks; soup du jour was Karo syrup; the entree was either Moon Pies or Twinkies, and all of this was followed by dessert. My popularity skyrocketed that month, too. You could always tell when there was a party at Chris’ house by all the bicycles in the driveway.
Apparently childrearing has changed. Nowadays you can’t chuck a wad of cash at your kid and leave the state. For my child monitoring duties, I had to actually stay in the house with the juveniles in my charge. It started out easy enough, me drinking a beer racing against the younger one in a video game. I lost time and again as we raced through the streets of Los Angeles. He was nice enough to show me the nuances of blasting through construction barriers while shooting out the window. After one egregious wreck, I assessed my beer bottle, deciding if I should have another. I figured it was OK because if we had to drive somewhere, he was a better at it than I was. Before I could even get out of my chair, he said, “You want me to get you another beer?” And like a springbok, he hopped up the stairs. Back in the day, his father and I would wrestle until someone had a submission hold before a beer would be fetched. It was then I understood the whole purpose of parenthood. Children are like human Roombas, Humbas, that will joyfully go about doing mundane tasks. Genius!
Two hours into this parenting gig, I was pretty sure I had it figured out when a chill ran through the room. It was the older one. She plunked down on the sofa with a look that said, “Could you be any stupider?” She was at that endearing age when any declarative sentence was grounds for an argument. I found out the hard way that with one kid you are a caregiver, but with two you are a referee. The first high-pitched debate concerned what video game to play. She wanted to kill zombies, and he wanted to race cars. I tried to play peacemaker by shutting off the TV and suggesting that we play a nice board game.
It is amazing how quickly two squabbling children can ally themselves against a common enemy. With one an expert zombie killer and the other a getaway driver, things were not looking good for me. I believe it was only the early arrival of the parents that allows me to now tell you about the first and last time I ever babysat.
— Chris Austin is The Beachcomber’s circulation manager, a writer and an avid bicyclist.
