Some kids call me by other babysitters' names.
Some kids call me Mom.
Some kids call me Babysitter.
Lots of kids just call me You.
A few kids call me Kel, although some pronounce it "cow."
Many kids call me Karen.
One kid calls me Carrot.
This evening, I had a five-and-a-half-year-old tell me just how old I was. She was trying on one of her mom's dresses, and putting on some of her mom's jewelry, and told me that she wished she was old enough to put on her mom's lipstick too.
"When I'm old enough," she told me, "I'll get to wear my mom's lipstick with all this. But you might be dead by then."
"I sure hope not!" I said.
"Why, because you want to see me?"
"Well, I would like to, but also it won't be very long before you're old enough, so I expect that I'll still be alive."
I had no idea that I was THAT old. But apparently, I won't live past another decade...
About Me
- Kel Miller
- I sing as much as possible, speak several languages, enjoy prime numbers, experiment with cooking, travel as much as possible, and blog about all of it.
1 comments:
Do any of them call you (or do any parents try to get them to call you) "Miss" Kel/Karen? That's what the kids I babysat every day two summers ago were encouraged to call me. It was uncomfortable. I liked it when they finally started just calling me Kim. (I didn't insist. They just started doing it when the ten-year-old boy asked about it and I told him he could just call me Kim if he wanted. I really didn't feel old enough at 19 to have a "Miss" appended to my name. If I needed that to earn respect, I must not have been very respectable.)
I would love to be called Carrot. ^_^ How cute. But yeah, (addressing "you") I don't think kids like to use names or other non-pronominal forms of direct address for people who aren't old enough to really be adults but aren't young enough to be peers. Kind of like the way I feel with instructors without doctoral degrees who aren't professors. My CS instructor goes by Mr. Klein, I guess, but in a college setting, and since he's so laid back, I don't like calling him that and typically just never directly address him.
I sure hope you're not dead in ten years! It's funny how old little kids think teenagers and young adults are, especially those teenagers and young adults who act their age or older.
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