Growing up in Walla Walla, I did a lot of babysitting. Mostly for people in my neighborhood. I had a number of regular families and I was more or less steadily employed on Friday and Saturday nights and once in a while during the week but my parents weren't too keen on that. You know, because those were school nights and I had homework to do.

Babysitting was a pretty good gig as far as jobs go. First you get to play with kids--you can run around and chase them, you can build things with legos, you can play with dolls, you can play hide and seek, read books to them, and if you're lucky maybe you can even get the kids to sing songs. Sure, might also have too change dippers, deal with crying kids and scraped knees, feed them dinner, brush their teeth and put them to bed but all in all I thought it was always more fun than less fun so I was happy to babysit.

I also didn't mind picking up toys or putting dishes away after dinner. Parents like this and I liked babysitting and being paid for it.

Anyhow, I haven't thought about this in ages and I am not sure that I would have but last night my MoM got a call to see if she could babysit.