You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, And now you're even older, And now you're even older

Today I had a very alarming realization about age. In this context, age when it pertains to babysitters.

Scott and I will celebrate our 3rd anniversary next Tuesday and we've decided to spend the day as a family and then have a dinner without Violet in the evening. Which means, using a babysitter for the first time at this base. There are several people I've been alerted to as babysitters via the Facebook world, but this would be the first time we are planning to use one.

For the last couple of weeks, there has been a printout in the elevators (and then reinforced on a couple of the FB groups for Yokota-related subjects) from a 16 year old girl who is looking for babysitting jobs. Since Scott and I are only looking for a dinner out that can happen after we put Violet to bed, I figured using a cold contact would be fine since all she really has to do is make sure Violet isn't in imminent distress while sleeping, and that hardly ever happens.

So, I called her this morning to see if she was available and to give her a few details if she was. On the whole, I felt the phone conversation was... disappointing. She was completely noncommittal on her availability and spoke to me as if I were a teacher asking her if she had handed in her homework in my staff mailbox - very spacey and evasive. I even had to suggest that she makes sure that she is available for that evening and for her to text me back either way. She still didn't sound like someone who was being offered a job.

I was a babysitter from middle school up until college. I had a regular Wednesday night family, and I'm still in contact with the mother. I was never brought up in a "yes, sir/ma'am" family, but we sure did know how to talk to an adult, ESPECIALLY if they were an employer in any sense. After I got off the phone with her, I thought back on the conversation, reminding myself that she is, in fact, just 16, and was trying hard to remember how I was at the age. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and thought, "well, I'm not really someone who looks/sounds authoritative and I'm only... wait, I'm 35. That makes me more than double her age..."

It was then that I realized that, yes, I can expect her to speak to me with some amount of respect for I am an adult. She is being asked to take care of my child and she should not act as though I'm just one of her peers. This made me feel a bit sad at first, weird for a while, and now it's really clear that I'm an adult MOMMY.

And then I got a different babysitter, who is another mommy and didn't sound spacey or evasive.