The babysitter in fiction: flash, one word, etc.
- Aug. 2, 2013, 10:15 a.m.
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- Public
Nine o'clock p.m. didn't feel like an appropriate time for a nine year old to go to bed, not when I was the nine year old anyway. But if we were still up when my brother got home from his job at the Grab It Here grocery store, there would be hell to pay. So she would tuck us in and sing to us. Or maybe it was just to me. Maybe the other kids went to bed without hassle.
Her voice was beautiful, Doris Day on late night black and white tv movie beautiful. Or maybe it was those were the songs she chose. My favorite, knowing nothing of foreign language, was "Que Sera Sera... whatever will be will be." She liked that one best, and in those last late nights we spent with her as our babysitter, she sang it alot.
She got the job after our neighbor, who used to come over after school and do crafts with us... crafts! moved away. She knew us well by then, having dated my brother for several months...months! by then. We were used to her and we loved her, as only kids can do, our allegiance more to her than our brother, who sometimes yelled at us.
But after she tucked us into bed, sang her songs and closed our doors, my brother came home from work. The house would be adult free for another three hours, and they spent the time as other seventeen year olds with opportunity spent the time. Tucked into bed, usually mom and dads. And it being the sixties, and the part of the country where the good part of the sixties didn't happen until the seventies, they soon found out that they were "in trouble."
The wanted to do the right thing, get married and live happily ever after. But he was a 17 year old boy, and there was a draft going on, and if he wasn't in school, baby or no baby, his number would be called. When her dad called instead, drunk, in the middle of the night, actually threatening that he had a shotgun and that there better be some marrying going on, mom and dad bought him a ticket to Pasadena, where our uncle lived.
We never saw her again, but I heard several years later that she'd had a son, and named him Mike, and married my brother's best friend, whose name was, of course, Mike. He was killed in Da Nang, before the baby walked.
Que Sera Sera?
Deleted user ⋅ August 02, 2013
It was fun to read. Wasn't it fun to write? I'm glad you're playing, I'll link this on the flash page, if you don't mind.
RoseS Deleted user ⋅ August 02, 2013
It was fun! Thanks for reading and linking!
haredawg drools ⋅ August 09, 2013
I was planning on leaving my typical one word note that I always leave to encourage the process and the momentum of flash fridays. Something like Fantastic! or Wonderful or Love this.
This, however, is both breezy and deep, fun and winsome, and a great attempt, givien the limitations of really nailing the cultural context of time and place.
I have an enlightened self interest in the continuation of Flash Friday. I think you should do this whether the game survives here or not. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be written.
RoseS haredawg drools ⋅ August 09, 2013
Oh, is it in danger?? I love writing flash, especially when i can do it freely. Have been tied up in meetings all day so will work on it tonight. Thanks for your encouragement.
haredawg drools RoseS ⋅ August 09, 2013
Heh, no I didn't say that quite right, it's not in danger, it's sort of an old game, it has long breaks from lack of interest but pops up again when it's needed. I just meant you have a knack for it, and if interest wanes don't let that stop you from writing them anyhow. Right now the game part of it seems as healthy as it's ever been. But after seeing them for a while it seems much less a game and more a collection of found art, precious and rare and seen by only the privileged few who go looking for it.
Shit, I'm still preaching on a rock here. I guess I just mean thanks and, you know, here's a fruit basket.
RoseS haredawg drools ⋅ August 09, 2013
ah, thanks! i'm not sure how to do the linking? but i wrote another one. Now to go see what y'all did.