Babysitting Blues

I hated babysitters when I was growing up. They always seemed to abuse my siblings and I, but not with physical beating. It was more like mental abuse and backbreaking work in shoddy, sweatshop-like conditions. We treaded softly and quietly, not wanting to anger our babysitting oppressors, lest the dogs be sent down upon us.

In kindergarten, at the tender age of six, my sister and I had to walk to school alone from the babysitter’s house, jaywalking across busy streets during morning rush hour traffic, skipping carefree through the ghettos and shanties of Aurora, Colorado, all without adult supervision. My only comfort was holding my sister’s hand as we dodged speeding traffic and stood on the tiny median awaiting clearance to sprint to the other side of Hampden Ave.

It was at this place where we only were only able to play in a little room with a white line barrier at the door that we were never allowed to cross. We’d enter through a back yard entrance and were stuffed with other kids into the festering tiny room all day long. We were not allowed into the kitchen or living room. There was a TV in the distance but were not allowed to go into that room because it was forbidden.

The most horrific babysitting experience was in the dark mid-1980s, probably around 1983, when MTV was on the air. MTV, in the golden days when they played music videos and not crap, was new. I recall seeing Sting with his huge-ass standing bass/cello and The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” video playing nonstop, Sting surrounded by candles. MTV played a lot of Rick Springfield back then. I hate 80s music. I really, really hate 80s music.

We were babysat in a neighborhood within relative walking distance of our house. My sister, younger brother and I were the ones being babysat, because my older brother had sports and such and was busy joyriding in the family van “Christine” before he got his driver’s license.

That horrible babysitter. That horrible house.

We would be locked in the basement or in the backyard, the babysitter’s own kids being hateful to us and laughing at us behind the closed screen door, “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” by Bonnie Tyler drowning out their evil cackles, “Come On Eileen” by Dexy's Midnight Runners blaring so loud our muffled cries were heard by no one, not even ourselves. They would snack on candies and treats and lunch without offering us anything, the lack of shade and summer heat beating down upon our wee heads, “Down Under” by Men At Work making things worse by mocking us in an Australian way with each bite the spiteful jerk kids made darkening my sister and my souls. We went to high school with those vile kids and I used to tell the youngest daughter the tales of how horrible her family was to us. She brushed it off because she knew it was true.

I have vague, disturbing, hazy memories of the whole experience; like my sister and I being imprisoned in the dim basement and forced to scrape the varnish off of coffee tables with razorblades as a vicious pit bull dog tied to a pole barked at us the whole time, the faintest sounds of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson heard through the floor from the fun and freedom upstairs. It was surreal and very Lynchian, something from a David Lynch film.

My sister and I always wanted to escape the horror by leaping over the fence and walking to the safety of our home. But little J. Charles would be asleep upstairs, napping in perfect peace, unaware of our dilemma, and we did not want him to be left behind where he would be scarred for life. We couldn’t leave him behind. No Dale gets left behind! No Dale! “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” by the Eurythmics gave us hope that we would survive those darkest of babysitting days.

If we had the good fortune to go outside in the front yard to play on a fake “day pass,” neighborhood bullies would push us around and chase us and throw grasshoppers on us, filling our little minds with terror and fear, making us anxious to go outside and play childhood games like Spider and Kickball and Jailbreak and Hide-and-Go-Seek.

Years later it turns out that the neighborhood bully, the fucker who threw grasshoppers on us and pushed us around, was non-other than my best friend MELT. We all know how superior I am to MELT in the present and it’s a pity he had to lord his childhood frustrations out on the unsuspecting and innocent Dale kids.

At home in the evenings, we pleaded with mom and dad, telling them the horrors of the babysitter, begging for them to make the madness stop. They did not listen. We eventually became latchkey kids, most probably due to the ever-rising cost of babysitters and the fact that my family was poor after pappie died.

I spit bile whenever I hear “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant. I want to yell whenever I hear “True” by Spandau Ballet. Whenever I take notice of “Hungry Like The Wolf” by Duran Duran I am flooded with reminiscences of the deeply disturbing days of my youth.

Fuck the 1980s.

Posted by RAD at August 7, 2007 3:54 PM