Childhood Career Choices - Part 2 Babysitting
From the time I was about 13 to 15 years old I spent nearly every weekend terrified. I babysat, not because I liked it, but because it was the only job I could get at that age. Does anyone really like babysitting? I hated it because I was always scared - scared that something would happen to the kids that I had no idea how to manage, scared that a bad guy would somehow sneak into the house and kill us all, scared that I would see a bad guy in the backyard trying to sneak in, scared that a bad guy would call me on the phone from another line in the house and tell me he was already in the house, scared that I would fall asleep and when I woke up the bad guy would have killed all of the children and I would have to explain to the parents what happened when in fact I had fallen asleep, scared to check in on the kids while they were sleeping, scared not to check in on the kids while they were sleeping, scared, scared, scared.
The houses in my neighborhood were all different variations of the same house and nearly all of them had a large sliding door in the family room that would go out to the backyard. I always had to make this big decision about whether or not I should close the drapes on that sliding door. If I closed them, then someone could sneak up to the door without me knowing it but if I opened them I kept seeing things in the backyard that weren’t really there. Such a dilemma. The TV is what saved me from totally freaking out. As long as I had the TV on I couldn’t hear all of the weird house noises and my imagination could be kept under control.
The house I most hated babysitting in was the Gallagher’s house. The first floor was the kitchen and living room, then it went up just 6-8 steps to the top floor which was where all of the bedrooms were. But the TV, the TV was in the basement. Have I told you how much I hate basements?
In the Gallagher’s house I would have to go down into the basement to watch the TV. And once I got down there you can bet I was not going to move. So even if one of the kids called out, I would not hear them. As soon as the kids were down for bed, I would go down to the basement, straight to the TV area and turn the TV on. I would get comfortable on the couch and not move the rest of the night. Unfortunately the Gallagher’s were the partiers of the neighborhood and would often not get home until 1 or 2 am. It was a long evening of lying on the couch in a constant state of fear. If I had to go to the bathroom, forget it. I did not want to walk upstairs and then have to come down to the basement again. Who knows if the bad guy got in while I was away?? Thankfully the Gallaghers left the best snacks and the best tip which made the nights of terror worth it.
There were a lot of urban myths at the time I was babysitting. The most common one was The Man Upstairs. After the children have been put to bed and the babysitter has parked herself in front of the TV she gets a call. It’s a man who says “Have you checked the children?” The babysitter decides it’s just a prank call and doesn’t give it another thought until the phone rings again and it is the same man and he says “You need to check the children.” Scared, the babysitter calls the police who tell her the next time he calls they will trace the call. The man calls a third time and when he hangs up she then gets a call from the police and they say “He’s calling from another line in the house, get out of the house now!” She runs outside right into the arms of a policeman. When they go inside the children are all dead and the man is gone. Thus my fear of answering telephones when I am babysitting.
One evening my older sister Ann was babysitting at the Smith’s. She got a phone call. It was a man who asked if “Jerry” was there. Jerry being the father. Ann made the mistake of telling him “No can I take a message”. The man told her something to the affect that he was right outside and she better not hang up or he would come in to get her and the kids. Ann hung up but then picked the phone right back up to call my parents who were three doors down. Because she didn’t leave the phone hung up long enough the man was still on the line. He said “Don’t ever hang up on me again or you’re dead.” She hung up again and ran next door to get help from the neighbor. After that night, as if I wasn’t scared enough to babysit, I was now terrified.
A few weeks later I was babysitting at a house and the phone rang. This was before all of those fancy dancy things we now have on phones - no voice mail, no call waiting, no identifier etc. So I picked up the phone and no one was there. Not only was no one there but the phone kept ringing even though I had picked it up. I kept saying hello in my quavery voice as I backed into a corner and my imagination went wild. But the phone just kept ringing. I was convinced that the bad guy was in the house, maybe right upstairs and on his way to kill me. I hung up the phone but it kept ringing. Yet every time I picked it up there was no one there and the phone kept ringing. I finally called the operator and in a very fragile, scared voice told her what was happening. She explained to me that they probably had a second line and it was the second line that was ringing and not to worry. Finally the phone stopped and I did see two buttons at the bottom of the phone. But now I realized that there were two lines in the house and isn’t that what happened to the babysitter with all the dead kids, didn’t he call from a second line in the house? It was a long night.
I never got used to babysitting. I kept my eyes open for anything I could do to make some money that did not involve bad guys just waiting to make their move. Finally when I was fifteen I was able to get a job at the local McDonalds and leave my babysitting days behind.