I Do the Babysitting

Anne Marie

Early 1970’s, Northern Wisconsin, the dead of winter. I showed up in the middle of a blizzard. Just a little too late for the previous year’s tax deduction. My grandparents swore they would never come back to Wisconsin in the winter again no matter how many more children my parents had. But it worked out ok, I’m an only child.

What I remember of that little town is mostly a house. A white wool shag rug in the living room. Mister Rogers, Walter Cronkite, and Captain Kangaroo on the little black and white TV. Oh, and Batman. The real one. My earliest (possibly constructed) memory is of the Nixon Watergate hearings on the news. I played with Juan and Katie from down the street. 

I think my parents loved that town, and had close friends there. My Dad and four of his closest friends went on a trip every Spring to look at waterfalls in Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Not exactly a place most people would look for waterfalls, but they found a lot. Went every year from the 70’s to 2018. I remember years of slide shows in my youth, trapped with the children of one of the other Waterfallers watching slide after slide of water on rocks in the woods. Admittedly, they were good shots. My Dad could have been a photographer. I rarely see better ones than his in the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club publications. But to him it’s just a thing he loves doing.

My own experience of being there was limited. There was a little grocery like Mister Hooper’s on Sesame Street. And our house was across the street from a sweet elementary school where I played on the playground.

Apparently the day my parents moved into that house, I was maybe a year old, a teenaged girl showed up at the door and offered to take me for a walk in the stroller. She explained to my parents “I do the babysitting.” It’s an indication of what a royal pain in the ass I am that my parents cheerfully handed me over. Anne Marie is a good example of one element of Competence. I still have slight memories of her. I was not what you would call an “easy” child, but she dealt with me. Mud puddles in the alley in the back, snacks ready just before I got hangry, she handled things. She must have listened to “Free to Be You and Me” 137,000 times in the years she babysat me. 

I only knew Anne Marie for maybe three years when I was less than five years old, but she made an impression. She made an impression on my parents as well, because they still tell that story about the girl who showed up and went off minutes later with their only child in a stroller. There’s something to that kind of confidence appearing in a young teenager. She was an excellent babysitter, didn’t beat around the bush, took an opportunity when she saw a moving van and a new family with a child.

In these posts I hope to highlight characteristics of Competent people. (And you’ll see me use big-C “Competent” when I’m describing the sorts of people I mean and those characteristics they have. Lots of people are good at things. They are “competent.” But we almost use that as an insult, if you’re “just competent” you may not be the best. But when I say “Competent” I’m talking about someone who people would describe as “the whole package” (if you omit any frills like appearance from what goes in a package.) These are the people you can trust with anything, the people very tip-top of your list when you have an emergency. The ones who can just figure it out, what ever “it” is. I’ve only seen some facets of certain people I’m describing, but I may choose them just to illustrate an important facet of Competence.

So my choice to include Anne Marie, who I have not seen in 45 years, is to highlight one characteristic. Competent people strike while the iron is hot. Timing matters. She saw an opportunity when it presented itself, and she took it. But she brought more with her than instinct for the right timing. A strange girl showing up at the door offering to borrow a toddler, even back then, shouldn’t succeed.

My parents are smart people, and typically careful, but she impressed them. Then she demonstrated that her self-assurance was well-founded by being the babysitter my parents still talk about decades later.

I don’t remember enough to tell you much else about Anne Marie. If I had to bet though, I’d guess she either has challenging work where she’s the lynchpin of her group, or she’s raised kids and been the Mom who ran the most difficult PTA events and built the scenery for school musicals, or maybe she’s started her own business. I hope her initiative and excellence have paid off and I have little doubt they have.