Unlike our previous posts, my recollection of our sordid
babysitting history is surprisingly strong. Though I could not remember the
names of all our babysitters, I remember thinking that most of them were very
good looking, and I had crushes on all of them at one point or another.
Though I remembered the Maria versus
Lisa battle that Kelli described quite well, I had never connected this
incident with the reason why I began babysitting my siblings at such a young
age. But I suspect that Kelli is right. In addition to babysitting during the
summer, I also became the Friday and Saturday night babysitter for my brothers
and sisters, staying up until 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning at the ripe old age
of nine while my parents were out drinking at Box Seats, their favorite sports
bar. I would watch The Twilight Zone from 11:00 until midnight, and once I was
thoroughly terrified by Rod Serling, I would turn to channel 38, which ran
M*A*S*H marathons all night long. I would sit beneath an afghan, watching
Hawkeye and BJ and Radar yuck it up while saving lives until my parents finally
returned home.
I eventually began to view Hawkeye as a
sort of father figure. He was the man who got me through the darkest parts of
those weekend nights.
When I was in an especially good mood or (more likely) feeling
especially nervous about staying up alone, I would also allow my brothers and
sisters to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live with me. None of us fully
understood the humor of the sketches, but the show allowed us to huddle
together on the couch for a while before I finally sent my siblings to bed.
There is one part of my sister’s
recollection that is surprisingly inaccurate (since she remembers almost
everything). Kelli described Maria’s house as “huge with lots of windows.” The
house was actually still under construction at the time, so the big windows she
recalls were actually open walls and missing sections of the roof. We
essentially spent the day at a construction site, and though the house was near
completion, there was still much work to be done.
I can also confirm that Lisa’s boyfriend
would take me down Federal Street on his motorcycle as long as I promised not
to cry. At the age of eight, I was apparently better prepared for a road test
than my younger brothers and sisters, so it’s understandable.
I watched that same lineup. And Hawkeye Pierce is my mother. I mean this so sincerely that I have a picture of him on my office desk.
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how much your words mean to me. It's so strange. I suddenly feel like I was less alone during those dark hours of my childhood. And a little less strange for relying on the comfort of a fictional television character.
ReplyDeleteBad parenting and neglect is awful on so many levels. Is it terrible of me to feel better knowing that my parents weren't the only ones making bad decisions back then?
It's not terrible, no. Not a bit. Is it terrible for me to realize, after reading about you, that my being held at gunpoint changed my life...after over 20 years of pretending that it was all just fine and whatever?
ReplyDeleteMy wife said that we are like brother and sister. We have the same parent, though the gender is different depending upon who you are talking to you.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we are instead twins, separated at first. Or some version of cosmic intertwining.
It took my less than twenty years to decide that PTSD was not something that a person should live with, and even then, it was my wife who made that decision for me. But it wasn't much less than twenty years!