I've been thinking of writing an autobiography or memoir but it just never comes together for me but I figured if I write one story at a time and post it on my blog maybe once a month, I can do that. Maybe one day I'll pull all the stories together and put them in a book but for now I'll just share some stories with you about my childhood. Some of the stories will be happy, some sad and some horrific because that was my childhood. But they will all be real, things that actually happened. If it seems like something that people enjoy reading maybe I'll keep it going. These stories will not be in any kind of order, I'll just write them as they come to me.
Babysitting in the 80's
My younger brother and I were both latchkey kids when we were young. If you don't know that term it means, I had a key to the house on a lanyard around my neck and I let myself and my brother into our house after school. I made us a snack, did the dishes and watched my brother. I was 10 years old and my brother was 8 when I started doing this. So I had a lot of experience taking care of a kid by the time I was 14 years old. The next door neighbor asked if I could watch her two kids at night mostly on the weekends because she was going to night school to become a realtor. My mom was fine with it and I just spent the night on her couch in case the kids woke up during the night. I made $2 an hour.
When I was 15 years old the lady across the street asked if I would clean her house and take care of her two year old on the weekends. Again I did this for $2 an hour. Any extra money I made went to buying my own clothes and extra food since my mom was spending her money on drugs.
When I was 17 I dropped out of high school because I was being bullied. (I got my GED when I was 23). But I started babysitting 4 different kids at that time. One girl was overnight during the week. Two others were during the day weekdays while their parents were at work and another little girl was on the weekends during the day while her mom was at work. All were $2 an hour. But I was babysitting pretty much all the time and just slept on the couches in their houses while the kids slept.
One of the kid's fathers was a single guy and he asked me out. But he was 55 and I was 17. The little girls mother was 21 years old and she up and left after having the kid. He was a nice guy and I did go out with him a few times. But he ended up moving to Montana and we broke it off after he got mad that I wouldn't move with him there.
Back then I was living in a little trailer that my mom owned and she let me live there for free. I just had to pay the $135 space rent and the propane for the stove which was $40 a month. I bought my own food and did all this on the money I made babysitting. Things sure were a lot cheaper back then. My mom and her boyfriend lived in another trailer in the same trailer park.
