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.