Coo Coo Ca-Choo

Last Sunday Dave Barry wrote about that tasty paste we ate in kindergarten and at Sunday School. Robert Fulghum explained that all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten. Today I'm laughing about the equally important things I learned babysitting.

In sixth grade in 1966 I discovered pop music. I moved beyond my red crystal radio kit to a little transistor radio in its vinyl case. Every Saturday afternoon I would listen to the top 49 countdown on KLMS, 1490 AM with my earphone that looked like my grandmother's hearing aid. I could listen while I dug dandelions in the front yard. Any time we complained of boredom, my mom told us we could chose whether to darn our socks or to dig dandelions. That was excellent incentive to learn to entertain ourselves. [Imagine that! We didn't even have a VCR in the backseat of the Chevy. Heck, we had just gotten seatbelts.] And, thank heaven I had a mom with a constructive cure for boredom!

Cue the memory soundtrack:

• Georgy Girl
• To Sir With Love
• What's It All About, Alfie
• Penny Lane
• Ruby Tuesday
• I'm a Believer
• Don't Sleep in the Subway
• I Dig Rock and Roll Music
• I Think We're Alone Now
• Feeling Groovy

I bought 45s for eighty-eight cents in Kresges at the only mall in town. My allowance for four weeks was enough to buy a 45. I put those plastic swirly adaptors in the record centers so I could play them on our hi-fi. I wore Yardley white lip gloss and blue eye shadow, and read both Sixteen and Seventeen magazines. My PaperMate pen was designed by Marimekko, and I was introduced to pizza and Doritos.

The next year I started babysitting for a couple with two daughters during all the Cornhusker home games and the chamber music concerts. This is significant in that

1. I began developing my skills entertaining and educating kids which have served me well as a mom and art teacher
2. I was introduced to the lifestyle of a more affluent socio-economic group
3. I was the beneficiary of football tickets when they couldn't attend
4. They convinced my mom that I was old enough to see Franco Zefferelli's beautiful Romeo and Juliet
5. I developed the ability, now long lost, to visualize the action of a football game from the radio announcer's descriptions
6. I was paid a whopping seventy-five cents an hour, when most of my other "clients" paid thirty-five or fifty cents
7. I had the opportunity to read their copy of The Graduate, or I might still not have a clue what sex is.

Slow down. You move too fast. Got to make the morning last.