How to Get a Meal as a Teenager

a tale of my first time babysitting

Every great person has had great accomplishments. Normally, that is what makes them great. Euclid wrote the famed geometry work, The Elements (I’m currently feeling the pain of this truth.) Newton discovered gravity, you’re reading my Substack publication, and S. Truett Cathy founded the one and only Chick-fil-A, Inc.

And me?

Well, I babysat some kids.

Here is that tale for those who dare.

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Once upon a time in a land far, far away (otherwise known as 30 minutes from me), there lived a small family: a dad, a mom, three children, and a rather misbehaved dog.

One day, the parents decided they’d like to spend an evening drinking wine and talking each others’ ears off. (Or whatever adults do at Christmas Parties.)

The problem? All their regular babysitters were booked. (Probably due to also wanting to drink wine and talk each others’ ears off at a Christmas Party.)

Now, like any other Christian teenager, I have two options for how to get a meal and fill my wallet: babysit or work at Chick-fil-A. On this particular evening, when the parents wished to go out, I happened to choose the first. Which meant I ended up at their little home with the responsibility of keeping a five-year-old boy, a three-year-old boy, and a one-year-old girl all alive. (Anyone who has dealt with kids knows this is much, much harder than it sounds.)

The minute the parents walked out the door, Operation Try-to-Get-the-Babysitter-to-Let-Us-Do-Everything-Our-Parents-Won’t began. And everyone was in full-on battle mode.

“We should turn on the TV!! Isn’t that a good idea, Miss Kiara?”
“Can we have candy? There’s some in the top cupboard.”
“Let’s play while they’re gone, instead of eating supper.”

Um, yeah, no. I’m a hungry teenager and there is no way eating is getting kicked from our evening’s itinerary.

I knew in order to keep the time (relatively) calm it was essential to keep the oldest—let’s call him Luke—happy and obeying. Because the three-year-old, Asher, would follow and do absolutely everything Luke did. This will forever be remembered as the night I learned to negotiate with five-year-olds.

Our first order of business, contrary to Luke’s suggestion, was eating supper.
Besides Asher insisting that he needed half a dozen sauces, it went by fairly smoothly with the only trouble being understanding the one-year-old, Elle.

You see, she is at a most interesting stage (or perhaps fluent in a language of whose existence I’ve not been informed). At any rate, all the vowels were being left out of her speech. So words like “done” become “dn” and I’m not sure if I heard a mouse or a child. Not only did I get quite proficient at negotiating, I also became a certified Language of the Missing Vowels translator.

Anyway, I made use of the trick that my older sister once revealed to me. Don’t get food for yourself at first. Wait till the kids are done eating, eat their leftovers, and you’ll have a meal fit for a king. Yes, it worked quite well.

I learned all sorts of other tricks. Like, when Asher wanted just as much orange juice as Luke, all I had to do was find a way to distract him and fill the rest of the bottle with good ol’ H₂O. I also found that kids know how to push you to the edge without making you fall over the edge: for every time you frustrated the babysitter, simply ask for a “ga nigh kiss”. There, her heart has been melted and you’ve won.

And that, my friends, is a rather roundabout way of getting a meal.

But trust me, the pizza was good.