Spies Like Us!

At age age 12, all I wanted was a Twinkie.

With my curly red hair and insatiable appetite for the above and other Hostess treats, I looked like Little Orphan Annie (though the Annie who ate her dog Sandy for sustenance).

So it was not surprising that Mama Simons skimped out on Ding Dongs and Ho Hos when traipsing through the Merrimack Valley's finest grocery store, Demoulas. Mom bought fruit, carrot sticks, tree bark, you get the picture.

The Jews come of age at 13 with their bar mitzvahs. Haha--this Catholic girl beat them because at 12 I said, Get out of my way Mom! I'm eating what I want!

And that's when I started babysitting.

My generation grew up on the Baby-sitters Club. Remember how Kristy's mom had to make call after call because neither Kristy, Charlie, or Sam could take care of David Michael? And so Kristy had a "great idea" to start a place where her mom could make one phone call--just one!--and hit a bunch of babysitters at once. Ahhh, this warrants its own post. Many many of its own posts! At any rate, in 1991 every prepubescent girl was DYING to babysit. And for semi-altruistic reasons. Yes, we wanted the $3 an hour and to watch a rated R movie "after hours" on HBO (New Jack City was the first one for me, at the Sheas. See ya and I wouldn't want to be ya!). But we also genuinely wanted to stock our Kid Kits and play My Little Pony with the girls and Transformers with the boys and Speak and Spell with the nerds. We really thought our 12-year-old experiences and actions would truly influence the 8 year old minds we were paid slave wages to watch.

These were my intentions when I was first called by Mrs. Travers to babysit her 2 beautiful daughters Cheryl and Caitlin. They had asked my 14-year-old sister first and when she had a TeenCo dance to attend at the Red Barn, they asked me instead.

Mr. Travers picked me up at 6 pm on a Friday night. I brought several Barbie Dolls and a coloring book. We got to the house, the parents kissed the girls goodbye, and then it was just the three of us.

Oh, how I had fun! We played "hairdresser" so they would brush my hair. Candy Land Bingo was next, then Chutes and Ladder, then Good Night Moon, then bed.

Now, the Baby-sitters Club sitters only were allowed to stay out till 10pm. I, on the other hand, had till midnight. This was uncharted territory! What was I to do?

"You're welcome to eat anything!" Mrs. Travers told me before she left.

So at 8:15, the kids were asleep, and that's when I became the Lewis and Clark of 12-year-old babysitters everywhere!

I began snooping!

My first foray into exploration was mild. I mined the cabinets and fridge to see what I could eat.

After devouring 2 bags of microwaved popcorn and 3 packs of cheese and crackers and half of a leftover chicken pot pie, I needed something sweet to cleanse the palette. Unfortunately, the Travers lived as if they were all diabetic--Stacey McGill would've fit right in! The only sugary snacks I could find were Nutella and decorative blue cake frosting in a tube. Now let's get real--no suburban child was cultured enough to eat Nutella because we had no idea what it was. But frosting? That was something else!

I finished all but one drop and put it back where I had found it. I threw away the rest of the evidence, washed my hands, and checked on the kids. They were alive.

I returned to the family room and put on HBO. War of the Roses was on! Even though I had no desire to watch a movie about angry divorcees, it was rated R so it had to be good!

The parents came home at 12:30, paid me $20 for about 7 hours worth of work, and drove me to my house. Apparently they didn't care that I ate half the contents of their kitchen, because they asked me to babysit 2 weeks later. Woohoo!

So my question for you all is--what food did YOU steal when you were babysitting? And what other surprises did you discover while innocently looking through the medicine cabinet to get a Band-Aid for the kids or searching for an extra baseball glove in the hall closet?

Share your discoveries with me!!! Post your comments below!