No Other Artificial Cherry Tastes Quite Like It

Two of my dad's favorite sayings when I was young were; "Don't touch that", (but he said it in French, so it sounded like "Na touche pa!"), and "I didn't raise a bunch of dogs to do my own barking". So we kept our hands off of anything that looked expensive, and we babysat.

My sister, Natalie and I were, if I remember correctly, 8 and 9 years old when my parents first began to leave our younger siblings in our care on Saturdays while they ran errands and ate fast food without us. You may think that we were too young for such a responsibility, but rest assured that my parents are very smart people who would not have left their two favorite children with Natalie and I unless they were absolutely sure that they would be safe. We fed Kellie and Joel Ramen Noodles for lunch nearly every Saturday, we taught them how to eat without the use of silverware, we showed them how fun it can be to pretend that the carpet was hot lava and jump from couch cushion to coffee table to couch, and all kinds of other intelligent and healthy activities. We had many adventures.

One Saturday, about a year after Natalie and I officially became the Saturday babysitters, we were doing our chores after Mom and Dad had left, and Kellie got to feeling like Natalie and I were unfairly making her do all the work. I don't remember whether that was the case or not, but Kellie was convinced that we were mean and rotten - so she packed a suitcase that was almost the same size as her six-year-old body, and declared that she was going to stay with Grandma, who lived about 4 blocks away. Natalie and I decided that the best thing to do would be to let her get on with it and hope that she chickened out so that we wouldn't get in trouble for losing her. Kellie started down the sidewalk with that suitcase full of frilly dresses and shiny black shoes, and with tears in her eyes she stomped towards the corner. Natalie and I watched from the front door, giggling and wondering how far she would get before she came running back. She was halfway past the neighbor's house when Kellie got scared and came back, sobbing and feeling worse than ever. I don't know about Natalie, but I felt very grown-up for having handled the situation in such an adult way.

About a year after that, I was eleven and we had begun to babysit for our siblings after dark. Mom and Dad were out late one evening picking up all the things we needed to go on a road trip the next morning, and we kids had settled in to watch a movie until they returned. At some point towards the middle of the movie something moved in my peripheral vision, and I looked over to the living room window which was covered only by a sheer curtain. There was a man standing there, just outside the glow of the porch light. His silhouette was still as he peered into our front room, and I became as motionless as he. He was just standing there, watching us. I was completely paralyzed with fear, and wondering all the while how to alert the rest of my siblings without provoking the man to get a closer look. I'm not sure if Natalie eventually noticed the man as well or if I was able to finally whisper some kind of alarm, but we all eventually stood up very quickly and rushed into the hallway where there were no windows for him to peep through. We stayed there, pulses racing, breaths shallow, waiting for the man to leave. Once or twice we peeked around the corner back into the living room, but the fear of that experience has wiped my memory of whether or not we ever left the hallway until Mom and Dad got home. The man eventually moved off into the shadows, where he bode his time until he could break into our neighbor's house, which he did. See what smart sitters Natalie and I were? The man left on his own - there was no need to call 911, or our parents. The neighbor took care of that when he gave her cause to do so. Who was I to make trouble for a man who had, at the time, done nothing wrong?

As scary as that episode was, our scariest experiences in babysitting happened in broad daylight and were self-inflicted. On Saturday afternoons, our parents would head out to do whatever it was they did every week when they left us, and Natalie and I would wait a good fifteen minutes to make sure that they weren't coming back for some forgotten item, and then we began to argue in urgent whispers.

"It's your turn!"

"No, I did it last week. Remember? I barely made it back before they came home!"

"Oh, right. But you're so much faster than I am - you go!"

"No! I'm scared. You go."

"Fine. I'll go. But I'm taking your bike."

So much anxiety! You see, we usually had a dollar or two to our names, and we craved Jolly Rancher Sticks like heroine addicts who were desperate for a fix. Cherry and Watermelon and Fire flavors were our true vices. Not so much the Grape or Sour Apple, but in a pinch they would do. In order to feed our addictions, either Natalie or I would need to stay with Kellie and Joel while the other went after the candy on our bike. It had to have been at least a mile, but my eleven-year-old grasp of distance was probably a little off. It was, regardless of actual distance, quite a journey.

When it fell upon my shoulders to secure the booty, I would start off by letting my adrenaline force my feet to pedal past the park that lay behind our house. I tried not to think of the boys who walked through the park wearing dark trench coats and chains, or the marijuana smoke that sometimes wafted through the trees, across the creek and into our backyard. I even tried not to think about the crawdads that sat upon the rocks under the bridge with all their millions of babies clinging to their underbellies and crawling all over the rotting leaves and mud.

Pedal faster, faster, faster.

After a few turns there was a straightaway that climbed a very slight hill. The sun was sometimes beginning it's decent by this time, and that added to my sense of urgency. I would pedal past a house where, oftentimes, two black girls would be standing in their front yard with a boom box blasting Salt n' Peppa's "Let's Talk About Sex". They were dressed in their scandalously tight jeans and midriff shirts, hips swinging in suggestive circles, and they were making up their own dance moves to the song. I was sure that I would be in deep trouble just for unintentionally listening to the lyrics of that song, so I tried to avert my eyes and shut off my ears. But I couldn't help oogling at their lurid moves and natural rhythm. I pedaled faster and faster, trying to escape the music.

"Let's talk about sex, baby,
Let's talk about you and me,"

(No! Must go faster!)

"Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things
That may be. Let's talk about sex..."

Where was those girls' mother? Why did they have to make this even worse for me?

Pedal, pedal, pedal. Hurry! Before they catch sight of you and try to give you a make-over and a dancing lesson!

Next came the most frightening and dangerous part of the trip: crossing Murray Boulevard. Murray was a very busy road with cars whizzing along at about 200 miles an hour, one lane, I believe, in each direction, maybe two, with a turning lane in the middle. I knew at this point that it was time to take a deep breath and wait. This part of the journey could not be rushed. You don't take your time and you could be squashed flat before you even reached the middle of the first lane. Look both ways...car coming...look again...might be enough time, but don't risk it....look both ways...this could be it...yeah, that truck is a good ways off...look once more, just to be sure...GO! I don't recall ever coming close to being hit, nor was I ever honked at, to the best of my recollection. Once across, it was just a few yards to the parking lot of the Circle K Mini-Mart.

Inside the Mini-Mart was row after row of dazzling candy displays. I passed the Mambas and the Bonkers and the Whatchamacallits, the SweeTarts, the Nerds and even the Bubblicious. On the very bottom shelf were the boxes of Jolly Rancher Sticks, all for fifteen cents each. On a good day we had enough money to get eight or ten of them, and then it was up to the check-out counter, where I held my breath hoping that the clerk wouldn't ask me where my parents were, or if I had come alone. I was too naive to know that Mini-Mart clerks rarely care about that type of thing.

The trip home was all about speed. Clutching a little paper sack filled with our spoils, eyes focused on the road ahead. If Mom and Dad had gotten home before the Candy Runner, there would surely be blistered butts and groundings and extra chores and all kinds of unpleasantry. There was absolutely more concern about getting home before Mom and Dad than there was about getting to the Mini-Mart without being abducted by a freak in the park or squished by a car. In fact, had one of us ever ridden up to the house to find the family minivan already parked in the driveway, I would hope that we would have been smart enough to just keep riding and never look back.

As it was, we never did get caught making one of our Jolly Rancher runs. The runner would arrive home, the three lucky ones who had stayed behind would finally stop praying for the runner's safe and undetected return, and we would all greedily choose a stick and then stash the rest in our bedroom closets, hidden in their paper sack until the next time Mom and Dad went out.

Those were the good ol' days when I was ignorant to the dangers of the world and completely hooked on those cinnamon flavored Jolly Ranchers.

I really hope my kids aren't as dumb as I was.