by Holly Rogers

Created on: March 15, 2009

I was fourteen when I had my first official babysitting job. Before that, I had babysat my sisters kids for a few hours here and there, but that was to be expected, free of charge, because they were family. However, my first offical babysitting job was for my mother's friends children. Our parents were going out to some event that night and would not be home until late, so I was there from early evening, until late at night, or the next morning, depending if I was still awake when they returned.

The children I was babysitting for were aged six, nine and eleven. As I was not a whole heap older than the eleven year old myself, we were relatively good friends and when nothing else had to be done, we could hang out and play games or just chat. Her youngest brother was well behaved and quite adorable. He did not give me any trouble. However, the middle brother, he had always been a brat and even before this day, had loved stirring me up. This meant the night was quite frustrating at times, with him pushing the boundaries as much as he could, and for a fourteen year old, dealing with a bratty child can be difficult to handle.

Not long after the parents left I had to cook dinner. To be honest, I had not really cooked a great many things before. Just the typical easy meals of a 14 year old, so my cooking experience was limited. However, I figured fish fingers were probably within my skill level. So I put them on a tray, in the oven and away they went. The fish fingers had only been in almost long enough when the fire alarm went off. It was not because the food was burning, but because I had forgotten to turn the oven fan on. So in a panic to make the noise stop, I ended up grabbing the end of the tray without an oven glove and burning three of my fingers quite badly. I was in pretty bad pain, but did not want to concern the children, so I pretended all was fine, when on the inside I probably wanted to cry.

However, dinner was the biggest drama of the night, but it tasted fine at least and the kids were settled enough to eat it. After dinner I read the youngest a book and he went to sleep willingly. His other brother, on the other hand, wanted to push my buttons a bit more and was throwing items from his bedroom into the lounge to be annoying and refusing to go to sleep. Eventually he settled for reading for a while, which apparently helps settle him and he did eventually go to bed himself. Then myself and the daughter went to sleep as well.

It was hours before the parents turned up, so I stayed the night and hung out with the kids for a while the next morning, before their father took me home. It was embarrassing explaining my burns to my parents and I ended up having my fingers bandaged for a week. All that for around $15 to babysit. Was it worth it? Probably not.

Learn more about this author, Holly Rogers.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.