My First Babysitting Job

When I was nine years old, I knew I was ready to be a babysitter. For years, my parents had paid my cousins, who lived on our block, to babysit my sisters and me. Most of my time was spent making sure the babysitters didn’t jump from the house roof to the garage roof. Oh, one also put our parakeet in the microwave but that’s a story for another day. Anyway, the point is that they were idiots and I was more mature than any of them. I knew I could do a better job than they could watching my sisters, and I was determined to be given that chance.

After nagging my mom and dad all summer long, my mom finally agreed. I was absolutely shocked. We were staying at my aunt’s cottage in Michigan for the weekend, and due to the added danger of a lake right outside the back door, I figured she’d never say yes. I held my baby sister Kerry, who was two, in my arms and waved goodbye as they pulled away in the family station wagon. Finally, I was in charge.

Right away, Annie, who was six, asked if she could go swimming. Even though my mom had told me twenty times to not let Annie or Kerry anywhere near the lake, I let her go. I was the captain of this ship, and I figured I could swim well enough to rescue her if she started to drown. I sat in a chair in the backyard, feeling very grown-up as I screamed at Annie that she was going out to far. After a few minutes of Annie basically ignoring me, I yelled at her to get out of the water and we went back into the house to watch TV.

I made Annie and Kerry a snack and we lay down on the floor with blankets and pillows. Everything was going super smoothly, and I congratulated myself on my excellent babysitting skills. Suddenly, a box of diapers came hurtling down the steps from the second floor.

We all froze. Annie and Kerry looked at me. My heart was beating fast. “It’s okay,” I reassured them. “That box was right near the stairs and I’m sure the wind just blew it down.” I was so comforting that I even convinced myself. There was no murderer hiding out on the second floor. It was just the wind. We went back to watching the show.

Two minutes later, a wicker basket came bouncing down the stairs. This was a problem because I knew that it was kept ten feet from the stairwell and held a bunch of magazines. Someone was definitely on the second floor. Without saying a word, I grabbed Annie’s hand, picked up Kerry, and ran out the front door.

The next door neighbors were standing out in front of their house. I tried to be as calm as I could. “I’m babysitting and there’s someone in the house!” I screamed.

Just then, we heard the screen door slam behind us. My mom and dad came out of the house, laughing. Their laughter stopped when they saw we were with the neighbors. It turned out that it had been the two of them the entire time. They hid on the second floor and tried to scare me into never wanting to babysit again. They were shocked that my instincts were so good that I fled the house with my sisters so quickly, and they were really embarrassed that the neighbors now knew what crappy parents they truly were.

This was a really dirty trick, and you might be wondering if I got my revenge. Of course I did. A year later, I became completely terrified of Richard Speck. This was in part due to the fact that my dad, a Chicago police officer, let me read the case report about him and in part because I was COMPLETELY TRAUMATIZED by my mom and dad’s trick. I was convinced Richard Speck would escape from jail and come through my bedroom window. My solution?  I decided not to ever fall asleep. When I got too tired, I would move my furniture around to keep me awake- right above my mom and dad’s bedroom.

The three of us were in for some sleepless nights.