The Babysitter Game

"Now that Andrew's past his first birthday, John and I think it’s time to get out of the house and be adults again. Can you believe it’s been over a year since we went out! Do you know any conscientious babysitters who can watch Andrew on Saturday nights? We’re desperate!”

I read the email, barely stifling a chortle. New parents can be so naïve! And to think people like this are raising our next generation. I shudder.

Nothing is more valuable to parents of young children than a regular Saturday night babysitter. Nothing. Do you understand? If you are a parent with a shred of common sense, you understand. If you aren’t, allow me to explain.

Your life is your own until you have kids. Then your life is their own. Day after day, night after night, you exist only for them.

This may be a recipe for happy well-adjusted children, but it’s a disaster for your relationship with your partner. Oh yeah, remember that? That thing you used to have with your partner, that thing that led to this? Distant memory. At best. If you’re lucky, you still work well together, like well-synchronized galley slaves, but the spark, the glimmer, the magic, the scampering together through fields of flowers with your sun-dapped hair tossed about in carefree abandon – they’re gone. Probably forever.

Unless you score a regular Saturday night babysitter, that is.

People will do almost anything for freedom: They’ll risk life and limb fighting tyranny, they’ll leave family and friends behind for a new life in the land of the free, they’ll jealously hoard their babysitter. For the salient facts about babysitters are simple enough: There are very few you’d trust with your kids, and with those few, it’s a zero sum game. If we get her, you don’t. If you get her, we don’t. When you find one, you find your freedom, so you hoard her.

And when I used the word “her” in the previous sentences, I did not mean “her” in the over-compensating-for-gender-inequality way, no, I meant “her” in the babysitters-are-always-female way. In theory, I suppose it is possible for males to perform this task – fathers certainly do – but in practice it never works that way in babysitting. It’s always a female.

In fact, the ideal profile is a girl, ages 14-16, old enough to possess some responsibility but too young to possess a real job or a serious boyfriend or a car. She needs the money, she has nothing better to do, nowhere else to go, so she’s always available. Of course, it helps if she’s homely, overweight and socially awkward. The last thing you want is a popular girl, the sort with ardent admirers and friends tempting her with fun-filled nights of youthful abandon. You’ll lose out every time.

Once you find her, you must keep her happy. Babysitting is surprisingly price inelastic – sitters are scarce, but they typically settle for whatever is the standard rate in your area (it’s $12 an hour here). I suspect that’s because most are shy about asking for money (very few exhibit the hard-nosed negotiation tactics many develop when older – another reason to favor the 14-16 age group), and also because both sides seem more comfortable pretending the arrangement is something other than the sale of services for cash. It’s just friends helping friends. Whatever.

And of course there’s collusion among the parental price-fixing cartel, which’ll ostracize anyone who breaks ranks and offers $2 more per hour. Trust me, I know. In our old neighborhood, we paid our babysitter $14 an hour. When we moved to our current neighborhood, we assumed $14 was the going rate here as well. Our new neighbors interpreted this as a naked grab for their babysitters, and reacted accordingly, shunning us and spreading scurrilous rumors that we were organic macrobiotic vegetarians who didn’t believe in TV. Let’s just say it took years to rebuild the bridges we heedlessly burned those first few months here.

So you can’t buy her loyalty. All you can do is (1) keep the refrigerator well-stocked with junk food and soda, even if you really are an organic macrobiotic vegetarian (it keeps her happy and may even fatten her further, buying you a few more years), (2) provide her with a comfy couch and a big screen HD TV with plenty of premium channels, preferably satellite, (3) keep her contact with the husband to an absolute minimum – most teenage girls (rightly) fear older men, especially those who show any interest in their daily lives and concerns (eeew, he’s like, you know, so creepy!), and (4) hire her every Saturday night, rain or shine, whether or not you feel like going out. You cannot allow her any exposure to other customers. They’ll just lure her away from you. You’d do the same.

One Saturday night my wife and I were not, how shall I put this, getting along, and the idea of spending an evening together was perhaps the last thing on our respective minds. Did we cancel the babysitter? No! We simply went our separate ways, me to the bookstore, she to do whatever it is she does. Same thing when one of us is sick: we tough it out, whatever the cost. I remember that night I sat through a three course meal at one my favorite restaurants, with the stomach flu, thinking only of how the food would look spewing from my mouth. Oh yes, I remember. I wish I didn’t. But that’s the price you pay to keep a good babysitter.

So now do you understand? Read that email again. Is she stupid or evil? I’d guess the former, but when it comes to the babysitting game, you never know. It could all be a ruse to lure us unsuspectingly into taking pity on her and thinking, hey, we could let her have our babysitter for just one Saturday night, couldn't we, that's not too much to ask, is it, and drop into her lap a gift-wrapped golden opportunity to steal that babysitter away from us forever. All it takes is a slightly bigger TV set, a slightly more comfortable couch or a slightly wider selection of sugary snacks and sodas, and that feckless babysitter will never return our calls again.

What’s that clanging sound? It’s our cell door slamming shut.

So, thinking it’s always prudent to have a back-up, an insurance policy against that day our current babysitter gets a life, or at least a better gig, I respond: “I can’t think of anyone right now. Let me know if you find any good ones!”

I’m crossing my fingers.

The Rope

It sometimes helps to reach the end of your rope.

For most of 2006 I’ve been struggling, sometimes mightily, other times lethargically, to understand this depression thing that’s settled over my life.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been depressed, nor is it the first time I’ve entered therapy, but it’s the first time I’ve actually tried to get better. The other times I resisted, never really investing myself in the process, taking advantage of the first rebound in my mood to declare a cure and be done with it.

This time is different. Or so I tell myself. You reach the end of your rope, it gets your attention. Urgency enters the equation.

Now I’m unwinding myself, trying to look without flinching, surrounded by these strands, once tightly wound, now loosely splayed about for us to see. It isn’t easy. And it isn’t pretty.

Sitting on the couch, staring at him, I just shrugged. My goal? To not be depressed. Can I be more specific? No, I can’t. What do I want to work on? I have no idea. Think of a time when you were happy. I can’t. Well, we have to start somewhere. Maybe you should identify the differences between me and normal happy well-adjusted people, prepare a chart or something, figure if they do x, y and z, and I don’t, maybe I should do x, y and z too.

That’s a depression test? What do those questions have to do with depression? They’re perfectly normal. Everyone feels that way. Well, a lot of people do. Okay maybe it’s a minority position, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Or abnormal, or whatever it is that test thinks it’s trying to test.

And for some reason my mind wanders back to the Pleistocene, our formative years, the time we grew up, and I’m noting what we did, and didn’t do back then, all those hard-wired traits that persist to this day, traits I’ve done my best to suppress. And it feels wrong.

And I drift back over my life, retracing my path through my decision tree, this time pausing at the branches, questioning my actions, trying to understand. I’m sympathetic, I’m making allowances, but it feels wrong.

And I capture my initial reactions, assessing them, turning them over this way and that, seeing where they lead me, learning where I should intervene, but in the end I no longer trust myself. I just feel wrong.

And I shine a light on my conceits, life’s little lifts to get me through the day, and they dissolve. They were wrong.

My normal is abnormal, and my abnormal is severely abnormal.

I’d been resisting all these years, trying to preserve this “me,” concerned if I succeeded I’d lose myself. I’d become my disease. Is it any wonder? I’ve had it my entire life. It really is me.

So I unravel. I talk. I evaluate. I think. And, for the first time in my life, I’m taking an anti-depressant, concerned it will completely rewind me in some strange pattern, but more concerned that I’m at the end of my rope, it's torn and frayed, I've nowhere else to go.

I do not know where this is going. I am not sure I should even be writing about it. But these days this is what I am, and I can’t separate what I write from what I am, so the decision is either to write it or shut up. Shutting up has much to recommend it, especially when you doubt everything you say. But today I’m writing it. Tomorrow? Who knows?

These days, it's like that, here at the end of my rope.

Thank You, Drew

Your daughter’s first birthday party – remember that day? You probably don’t, what with all the beer you were drinking with your buddies while you watched the game and avoided the kids. But I remember that day, will probably never forget it, for that was the day my infant daughter needed a diaper change and I asked you where the changing table was and you claimed not to know, adding, in a loud voice aimed at your buddies, that changing diapers was women’s work.

Thank you for that, Drew. Though your remark was intended to amuse your friends at my expense, you spoke so loudly that many others heard it too, including my wife. And if you could’ve seen the look on her face as it dawned on her that you had never changed a diaper in your life, and probably never would, while her husband was changing a diaper, and in fact had changed hundreds, maybe a thousand by that point, sharing that parenting burden without complaint, even when mocked by Neanderthals like you, well, Drew, let’s just say that nothing I could’ve done on my own would’ve produced such a look of adoration and appreciation. Suddenly I was super-husband. My sins were forgiven. Any doubts were forgotten. All she had to do was think of you, and she loved me more.

And you didn’t stop there. The way you handled your family’s finances, all the bank accounts and credit cards in your name, keeping your wife on a short and penurious leash by giving her a meager weekly allowance while you routinely blew thousands on weekend trips to Vegas with your buddies, well, what can I say except thank you so much for turning me into a paragon of kindness, generosity and virtue in my wife’s eyes.

Or the way you made your wife get up early to make your breakfast every day, even days when you had to leave for work before the dawn, or the way you’d call your wife from work and dictate the menu for that night’s dinner, waiting until after lunch so you could ensure that your dinner harmonized with your lunch, or the way you’d compare your wife’s cooking to your mother’s, unfavorably, and loudly for others to hear, well, let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for obliterating any possibility that my wife could ever think of me as a high maintenance husband. You perished those thoughts.

Unfortunately, I cannot thank you for your extramarital affair, for though you’d think reports of your straying would further boost my wife’s esteem for her ever-faithful husband, it just convinced her that all men are slime. It took me weeks to claw my way out of your muck and back into her heart.

And I cannot thank you for your habit of critiquing your wife’s body, urging her to lose weight in her bottom and gain it on top, comparing her to the surgically-enhanced hotties in your comprehensive collection of porn, all while your beer-filled belly bulged ever bigger, no, I cannot thank you for this now that your wife finally agreed to get the boob job you always wanted and, the day after you paid the bill for the procedure, left you for the T-ball coach, taking your kids and your boobs and permanently depriving me of the greatest contrast agent ever.

Without you, I will rise and fall in my wife’s eyes only on my own merits. So I’m doomed. Thanks for nothing, Drew.

The Genius of Prius

The Prius is genius.

I am not basing this conclusion on the car's revolutionary Hybrid Synergy Drive®, or its super clean Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emission Vehicle rating, or its designation by the EPA as a SmartWay Elite Green Vehicle. No, I am basing this conclusion on the car's status as the only Cheap Acceptable Car®.

Let me explain. I live in a community. As in any community, a set of common customs, folkways and mores bind us together. Some of these are mandatory, such as those emanating from the CC&Rs embedded in our deeds, but most are optional. We nevertheless tend to conform our behavior to these customs, folkways and mores because it affirms our commitment to our community.

For instance, when we moved into our community, my wife drove a minivan. We quickly learned that, according to the customs of our community, minivans are driven by nannies and maids. Wives drive big luxury SUVs or Mercedes wagons. After a few months of answering questions such as "¿Habla inglés?" and "How much do they pay you?" my wife broke down and bought a Mercedes wagon.

At that time, I drove a Toyota sedan. I happen to like Toyotas, what with their rock-solid quality and Spartan design, and though sports cars certainly appeal to me, I am realistic enough to appreciate that with my commute -- bumper-to-bumper traffic at speeds ranging from 0 to 20 miles per hour -- driving a Toyota or a Porsche is pretty much the same thing. Or, even if the Porsche is marginally nicer to sit in and fume, it certainly isn't $50,000 nicer.

I was perfectly satisfied with my Toyota sedan until I started to get the looks. People would stare at me as I drove by. Lots of double-takes. It is customary in my community to wave as one's neighbors drive by. Few, if any, bothered to wave to me, certain, no doubt, that a community resident couldn't possible drive a Toyota sedan. Some asked if it was a loaner. At best, they concluded I was an eccentric cheapskate. At worst, they talked of organizing a canned food drive for my benefit.

So I broke down and leased a BMW, quadrupling my monthly car costs. It was either that or a Mercedes or a Porsche, the only acceptable car choices for men in my community at that time. The sense of relief, for me and for my neighbors, was palpable. They waved. I waved back.

Unfortunately, I'm not that happy with the BMW. It's really complicated. Perhaps for that reason, things break. The rims are always covered in brake dust. No interior storage. One measly cupholder. No iPod adapter. People assume I'm an asshole. Snooty service people at the dealer. And, sitting in traffic, day in and day out, I feel guilty that I've reduced this Ultimate Driving Machine, designed for the freedom of winding mountain roads and the Autobahn, to the Ultimate Urban Stop-and-Go Crawler, a cruel fate indeed. And a complete waste of its potential. My BMW deserves better than me.

I don't need this. And I'm pretty sure I don't need a Mercedes or a Porsche either. So I'd like to downsize, but I don't want to draw the looks again. This is where the Prius comes in.

Over the last year or so, I've noticed some of the richest members of my community driving the Prius. They don't drive it because it's cheap, or sensible, no, they drive it because it confers a special sense of sanctimonious superiority. "Look at the hardships I endure, driving this cheap-ass piece of crap Toyota, just to save your environment," they seem to be saying as they putter on by powered by a potent mixture of pious rectitude and reverse snobbery. Behold the genius of the Prius -- the modern equivalent of sack cloth and ashes.

This is why the Prius is now an acceptable car in my community. The only Cheap Acceptable Car®.

Consumer Reports recently analyzed the economics of acquiring a Prius, concluding that the tax break and the gas savings weren't sufficient to compensate for the $5,000 difference between a Prius and a mere Corolla. What Consumer Reports failed to account for is the $50,000 separating a Prius from a BMW or Mercedes or a Porsche.

That difference doesn't matter to my richer neighbors, but it matters to me. A lot. I'd like nothing more than to spend less on my next car. And now, thanks to the special status of the Prius, I can.

And it's like they throw in the holier-than-thou halo for free. What a deal!