(Every day this November I’ll conduct an interview with an imaginary person.)
I take care of myself just fine when I get home from school. So if I don’t need a babysitter when Mom isn’t home at three o’clock, then I shouldn’t need one at seven. The only difference is Lindsey. It’s stupid.
Lindsey is your sister? And she isn’t around when you’re home alone after school?
No, she goes to daycare at Mom’s work.
How old is she?
Four, almost five, I think. She’s old enough to use the toilet and keep her fingers out of sockets. I can heat up the pizza puffs and tell Lindsey when to go to bed. And I’ve read The Boxcar Children. We can take care of ourselves. We don’t need no stinking babysitters!
So you don’t like your sitter?
She’s okay. She isn’t like some of my friends’ sisters, who get really mean sometimes. She’s cool most of the time. She lets us do stuff and she doesn’t yell, and when she came over the day after my birthday, she brought cupcakes that her mom had made for us. The only thing I really don’t like about her is that sometimes she has some boring TV shows that she wants to watch, and if I want to watch something different, I have to use the old TV with messed-up colors.
So you’d say it’s more that you don’t want a babysitter at all, then—not that you don’t like the babysitter.
Yeah. I mean, I can’t have anyone over with a babysitter. I can’t go anywhere. That stuff is fine when I’m alone after school. And Mom pays her twenty dollars when she gets home. If Mom gave me twenty dollars to take care of Lindsey, I could probably buy a new Xbox game every week.
Have you suggested that to your mother?
I do all the time. I also tell her she doesn’t have to worry about staying out too late, because she won’t have to worry about Jess needing to be home by a certain time. She doesn’t listen.
Posted November 29, 2009, 11 pm
