Month: April 2010

I got a text message from the babysitter of my daughter’s friend, she was running 15 or 20 minutes late and could I pick up the twins after school.

OK, I responded.

It was not big deal.  If the sun is out and there are no lessons or sports practices to rush off to,  the kids like to run around together in the school yard.  I was going to be there anyway for at least half an hour so it wasn’t a big deal at all to watch some extra kids.  The mom’s often call each other for help at pick up time, especially if we are just running late, about to get on a train and know we’re not going to be there right at 3:00 when the teachers let go of the children, but will be there in about 15 minutes.  The kids are taken back into school to wait for their adults in the auditorium, but if they can be picked up by someone else’s mom so they can involved right at the start of a game of wall ball or tag, all the better.

So, the babysitter never came.

The kids were playing nicely, and it was good for them to run around after a day of standardized tests, so I didn’t think anything of it until about quarter to 4.  I called her and she didn’t answer.  The twins used my phone to send her texts which she didn’t answer.

By 4:00 I was worried.  It was beyond a conversation running long or a subway train held in the station.

I told the other mothers on the playground and our imaginations were not generating positive images.   I called the mother of the twins at her office. I held off calling her as long as I could.  I didn’t want to disturb her at work.  She’s a friend of mine.  I know this her  the long day at the office, the one she she pays extra for.  But, she hadn’t heard from the babysitter either and the babysitter wasn’t answering her phone.

There was a 5:00pm baseball practice that would have to be missed, and that was upsetting to the boy who was starting to act out towards his sister and My Kid.

The father of the twins didn’t answer his phone.

I was going to take them to my apartment in another neighborhood until the father got off work.

It was getting a little scary.  I was getting worried about the pretty young babysitter who had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight in Manhattan.  I was still believing in a subway service interruption and/or a dead cell phone battery but my mind was beginning to create darker scenarios.

Finally at 5 o’clock the apologetic babysitter arrived at the school playground.

She was near tears.

She’s a dancer and had been to an audition at the Met in Lincoln Center.  She had been told her audition would be over by three.  They were in an underground studio with no cell reception.

I’ve been in that situation.

It’s so stressful.   Rent paying survival jobs are lost all the time because of auditions like that.  It’s one of the things that makes a career in the performing arts seem so impossible.  It isn’t always about the level of commitment to the art.  Sometimes it’s the level of commitment to other people that gets in the way of a career.