Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
WHO KILLED THE TEN YEAR OLD BABYSITTER?
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Special guest and professional kid wrangler Jenny joins Ross to discuss what happened to the lost art of babysitting. Tangents include: Bucket head kids; rich people and knockoffs; 24 hour news; Shiny Shoes; Tap dancing; Snoos; Kyle Krupnick; kids in business suits; boarding school; sloppy clothes; latchkey kids; and forehead kissing.
Notes:
1. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/legal-babysitting-age-by-state
2. https://humansoftumblr.com/babysitters-reveal-the-most-inappropriate-thing-parents-asked-them-to-do/
3.https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/local/latchkey-children-age-restrictions-by-state/1555/
4. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/parenting/have-teenagebabysitters-gone/
5. https://fee.org/articles/why-teens-rarely-babysit-anymore/
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
My very first babysitting job was fifty cents an hour. I made a dollar a day, and it was a 10-hour day. And uh Wait. Wait, hold on. That's not right.
SPEAKER_05Step step back.
SPEAKER_01Hold on.
SPEAKER_05Step back, Matthew.
SPEAKER_01No, just just believe everything I'd say.
SPEAKER_05Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do. The very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder what and why. I'm Ross, your host, and today I have one of my favorite humans, the immensely talented and funny Jenny. Hello, Jenny. Hey! It's great to have you. Jenny is a great person to have as a friend because she's one person in my life who seems perpetually suspicious of me. And this is a good thing for me because I'm pretty good at bamboozling most people, but not Jenny. Everyone needs a Jenny in their life to keep them on their toes. But today we are going to talk about what happened to babysitters. Where did they go? So, for those of you who are of a certain age, there used to be a job for young people, young teenagers or even younger kids, and it was called babysitting. And the way that would work is a little kid would come over to your house to take care of your littler kids for super cheap, like sometimes 50 cents an hour or a dollar or two dollars, but not more than that. And it was considered perfectly normal. Perfectly normal. And if the whole house burned down and the kids all ran away, no one would say, what were you doing having a 10-year-old watch your kids? It was just part of what people did. And now leaving your kids with other kids is considered, possibly by some, reckless. Also, by the way, I will mention that in my time as a kid, it was perfectly normal for your parents to leave you alone at home while they ran errands or whatever. And it was also normal to leave you in a car. And no one would come along and break the glass and call the police and arrest. You know, it was just like, yeah, just you kids sit in the car and I'll be back in a few hours. Entertain yourselves. Now, Jenny, is it I don't know how you describe yourself. I've I describe you as a professional childcare person, but how would you describe your profession?
SPEAKER_02Uh a professional childcare person is definitely accurate. I don't think anyone would have any questions of that.
SPEAKER_05I didn't know if there was like an official title that you used.
SPEAKER_02I think the most common one is nanny. Okay. But um I don't know. I consider myself more of a work wife than a nanny.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Well, help me understand the difference. What's what's a work wife? Uh Did you say work wife? A work wife, yeah. Okay, work wife.
SPEAKER_02Uh you're going to be um kind of antiquated about it. But uh I usually I've been a nanny with like little littles for a long time. And then for a long time now, I have been a work wife. Essentially, I go and I work with um families with older kids. So I don't have to change diapers or do any of like spend hours playing Uno. Uh, and then I run errands for the family and do things like that. But I also nanny. So I just like to say work wife now instead of nanny.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, work wife sounds kind of cool. Uh um it also reminds me of like Handmaid's Tale. Or um or like uh there's sometimes some people in the workplace would say, oh, this person is my work wife. Like I'm like a coworker. Yeah, like we're friends, but it's there's nothing sexual that we know of.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh usually there was. But um that uh that's a whole thing. That's a different show. We've done that show and we'll do it again. Work wife. So you so you're uh you tend to take care of older kids. Aaron Ross Powell, ever since COVID, now I'm back to the little littles. Oh, you're doing little littles now.
SPEAKER_02Little littles, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02And so you are changing diapers, then I am changing diapers, unlimited games of Uno.
unknownThat's all.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell So but you're you're you I think you are what people who uh at least have the money, because you're not cheap. No. So the for people who have money and can afford uh a professional, this is kind of the way they go now. They're not like the people you work for would not hire a 10-year-old to come over and like be the work kid wife. Right? No. Um by the way, you can read all kinds of stories posted by ex-babysitters, you know, about crazy things that happened. There was one, this is totally off topic, but I just there's one I was reading, I have no idea if it's true, but it sounded like it was where this person was babysitting these people who had a fallout shelter or a bomb shelter. And they were kind of like maybe early prepper type people. And so they were just always saying, hey, if something happens, grab the baby and go to the shelter, because the attack was they believed an attack was coming any minute. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that at all weird?
SPEAKER_05Right. So the person was like, okay, it's kind of a fun little game, and they would practice running to the shelter with the kid.
SPEAKER_02Let's play a c apocalypse.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, let's do that. Woo! And here's your 50 cents. So so but so then the these parents became convinced that an attack was coming, but they still wanted to go down to chilies or whatever.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like that just seems very Yeah, weird, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Like, well, I you know, they have you know, it's pancakes.
SPEAKER_02The world's gonna end, but it's here, stranger. Watch my kids.
SPEAKER_05I gotta get me a cheeseburger. So so so the woman, the mother person says, if you don't have time, she's telling us to a 10-year-old babysitter. If you don't have time to get to the shelter, you have to suffocate the baby.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_05So it won't be left.
SPEAKER_02If I had a nickel.
SPEAKER_05And the kid was like, uh I'm not doing that. So good for her. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But you know, boundaries, you you've got to have them in place at 10, and you've got to have had them in place at 100.
SPEAKER_05And uh I think that's true. And I I like to think of my own 10-year-old self, and I'm not sure what I would have done, but I'm gonna get to that in a minute. So what the children. What's going on?
SPEAKER_01I'm just gonna take these kids with me.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that would have been better, I think. I mean, suffocating a kid, first of all, if you've ever tried it's hard to kill things.
SPEAKER_02It takes forever. I'm not exp not not experienced.
SPEAKER_05You know, your name. I read in a book. You read it. A friend told you once. Um killing things is hard. Okay, so we've learned that. So what I want to note is Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. Yeah. What did we learn from this? We learned that killing things is hard to do.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I just wanted to make sure I took the moral of the story.
SPEAKER_05Yes, that was the moral.
SPEAKER_01So when I retell it at a party.
SPEAKER_05Yes, you will be able to land. Because you hate being the person who tells stories and you're like, what was the point of that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, like when I'm making a new friend, I want to like start out strong.
SPEAKER_05I don't want to just trail off at the end of my suffocation story. And and there's a lot of people who think that constitutes a story, you know, when they just kind of So the next thing I knew, like I didn't have any money for the meter. Yeah. And then it's like, okay, what happened? Oh, nothing. Oh, well, that's why did we just sit here for five minutes?
SPEAKER_02God bless them for trying to make conversation.
SPEAKER_05End up with a like somebody is murdered at the end. If you're lucky. Make it up if you have to. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So work wife. I like it. It's on a sweatshirt. I I want to buy it. Um I really do. I would love to have a sweatshirt, says work wife. I also would like to have a wife in case you know what you want. That's also not what we're doing, but it's also another lesson. Uh so first of all, has any so you were a kid once.
SPEAKER_02I I was indeed. Many of us were.
SPEAKER_05When you were a kid, what was what was the deal? Did you have babysitter? Did you babysit yourself? What was the deal?
SPEAKER_02I was both. I was uh latchkey kid far too young. Latchkey, right? Yeah. I um like one of my earliest remembrances is uh being put on the bus to like go to school, like a city bus.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02To go to school. School is probably only like two, three miles away. Yeah. But my mom, like, I was like four or five, because my birthday's in September. Okay. And uh she put me on a bus and was just like, here's 35 cents, go to school.
SPEAKER_05Good luck to you. See you in 12 years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I remember um I was nervous. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh I got to school and I was getting off the bus, and this bus driver like was like, Hey, next time you get on the bus, make sure you pay.
SPEAKER_02I'd forgotten to put money in.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I was it's like it it kind of traumatized me.
SPEAKER_05Did you put the money in before you got off or did you pocket it?
SPEAKER_02I think I just kept on wa like, you know, I was four or five. I was I was far too young to be put on a city bus.
SPEAKER_05So you were already earning. Yeah. You're like, that's 35 cents to be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I'm gonna use this for trauma counseling later.
SPEAKER_05And boy, 35 cents can buy you some really good therapy.
SPEAKER_02Can you imagine? Adds up. I'm still really angry at that bus driver. Like, what did you think he was teaching me?
SPEAKER_05Okay, you're angry at the bus driver.
SPEAKER_01What about your mom? You can't as a child, you can't be angry at your parents. You gotta depend on them to survive. Oh, that's right.
SPEAKER_05That's how come the resentment comes later and you're like, why do I resent my parents? Oh, because they put me on a city bus with 35 cents and told me to see a Trevor Burrus, why do I always get a chill down my back every time I see a city bus? Okay, so you were a latch key, which um still is a term that's used, I think. I mean I mean sure many parents send their children. And so it's when one or both, whoever the caregivers are in the household, they go away. It's they're not there. Yeah. So you go to school, but then you come home and there's nobody there. So you are letting yourself in, you're taking care of yourself until when it whoever those caregivers are, they show up. Yes. And that was your experience. That was mine. And uh how did that affect you, do you think?
SPEAKER_02Oh, positively, I'm incredibly independent. I lived alone uh for many a year and quite contentedly.
SPEAKER_05You had no siblings?
SPEAKER_02Uh I had two older siblings, but they were 13 and 14, and we had a tradition in our family that the women in our family go to boarding school. Uh so right around the time I came along, boarding school, they were Interesting. Yeah. Did you go to boarding school? I went to boarding school. Oh, just for a year. Why only a year? My mom, well you said, she put you on a bus and my mom, while I was away at boarding school, like became born-again Christian. And uh when I came home from boarding school that summer, she was just like, Hey, you're gonna I want you here with me where I can teach you the love of the Lord.
SPEAKER_05And how did that happen? How did that happen in that year?
SPEAKER_02What what so in like boarding school? Because my mom again is a single mom. And so she had to take on another job to send me to boarding school, which, you know, lovely.
SPEAKER_05That was awesome.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and um I I said that in a bad way, like I was like thankful for that. And uh while I was there at the she was at the other job, and there was a born-again Christian guy who was just like, Hey, get saved. And she was like, All right.
SPEAKER_05Is that what those born-again Christian guys do? Is that their thing? Yeah, like, hey, you want to get saved.
SPEAKER_02You wanna get saved? And ladies are like, uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05You want to get saved tonight. Um so she uh got saved. She did. And then she said, Jenny needs to get home and stop being at boarding school and be home and learn this new lifestyle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Which you did. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's you like sometimes I think about it and I think not only was it the born-again stuff, but I think there was a little bit of empty nest syndrome. I think she just didn't necessarily like all of a sudden the other daughter was gone.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. But at that point you were old enough probably to like take care of yourself if she was at work.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And uh you know, in some states, you have to be a certain age to be left alone. And I I think twelve makes the cut in most states.
SPEAKER_02I think it's yeah. I think is here at least in Oregon.
SPEAKER_05It is ten. And that also is the legal age for babysitting. You can be ten in Oregon. Uh in Nebraska, you only have to be seven to do babysitting. I came up at a time when children were it's not that we weren't valued, but nobody really cared about they they wanted us to live. Yeah, we were all free range kids. They they wanted us to live, but it was there was no involvement in how we lived. It was like we'll feed you, we'll put a ho a roof over you. Everything else is kind of up to you. So that so so that's and we had all these toys like lawn darts, BB guns, there were chemicals everywhere. Uh our beds had filled with chemicals, and our carpet was filled with we were, and then the food we ate was horrifyingly bad. And that was all okay. Nobody was like, oh, you should have better nutrition. I mean, I survived eating for like 10 years of my childhood eating cinnamon toast. That kind of was my diet. And if we ran out of cinnamon, I'll just put sugar on the bread. And if the toaster isn't working, then it's just regular bread with sugar. Anyway, um, and uh and guess what? It turned out I was hyperkinetic. Why? Um so that was that was the I call those the guinea pig kids. It was kind of like whatever happens, happens. If they if they survive, good. If they don't, well, yeah. That's why you had a lot of big families.
SPEAKER_02The whole like we're so glad that we don't have to put you in a factory for 10 hours.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, you're lucky that you're you're you're not having to go to the factory. Uh but we kind of if you happen to go to a factory, that's okay. Yeah, if you could bring home a little bit of extra cash to help out for that cinnamon. Yeah, I mean, do something, because the cinnamon is not cheap.
SPEAKER_02It is not cheap. It is not a cheap spice.
SPEAKER_05It does not grow on trees or does it, I don't know where cinnamon comes from. I don't know. Neither do I. So then after that, like a generation later, I call it the transitional era where parents kind of were just doing a lot of self-medication. They were the Valium parents, the drinking, and madmen. They yeah, they were kind of tranked up. So it was a little different than not being involved. It was just kind of like emotionally and unavailable. And then something happened, which I witnessed firsthand in the 80s. Okay. And suddenly I would be driving down the road and there'd be a car in front of me, and they'd have a yellow triangle in the window, and it would say, Baby on board. And I'm like, who cares? Like, why? And I thought it was like, but it was a thing. It's like suddenly in the 80s, children became precious. So the boomers started having kids, and they're like, our kids, we made this. This is a beautiful thing. And I was neglected as a child. Nobody cared about me. So I'm gonna give this kid all of the love that I should have gotten. And I won't feel empty on the other end of this, but in case I do, I'm also buying a BMW. Um, so kids became the uh precious, and you had a lot of two-income families, so there had to be that's when nannies started coming in, but there was just all of this kid, kid, kids. Okay, so that was the 80s. Then the 90s come along, and this is gonna be relevant to the babysitting in a moment. The 90s come along, and what do we get? We get 24-hour news. 24-hour news sounded like a bad idea at the time because it was like news used to be 30 minutes at 6 o'clock. What are you gonna do for 24 hours? How are you gonna do this? Well, we found out, right? They're gonna scare us for 24 hours and tell us horror stories. And the most popular horror stories were about kids getting abducted, murderized, abused, satanic cults, all of this. Boom, boom, boom. And that was hammering. So parents, so when I had my little kids, we were like being told all the time, your kid is about to be kidnapped any minute. Your kid is at risk. So kids became went from being precious, now they're endangered. So the parents' reaction to that was to become much more restrictive with what they let their kids do. We can't let little Johnny or Janie free range. Because did you said you were a free range kid, right? I was. So what would you would could you like just go out in the neighborhood and do whatever you wanted, or how did that work for you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Uh so we lived in the city um in St. Louis, and uh there was like a lot of times it would just be like, bye, and you know, come back by dark. Like the words by dark were never uttered because I wasn't the kind of kid who was just like, Oh, it's getting dark outside, I'm just gonna hang out here some more. And it was definitely, you know, yeah, like c like yelling distance was kind of the the rule of thumb, but I don't remember it being tested often.
SPEAKER_05Right. So you would just figure out what you were gonna do on your own. We were supposed to come home. In one neighborhood we lived in, they had streetlights. And when the streetlights came on, we had to go home.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05In another neighborhood we lived in that didn't have street lights, my mother had a police whistle. And she if she wanted us home at any time, she would blow this whistle and you could hear it for a couple miles. Anyway, so the point is that all ended for kids in in a lot of neighborhoods. Not all neighborhoods, but in a lot of neighborhoods, parents clamped down on their kids' free time because they are afraid that even though the statistically the chances of the a kid being abducted or abused or murdered was extremely small. Like the statistics didn't change, but the stories they were feeding us all the time was like it was happening everywhere. Even though the reality is that if something bad is going to happen to a kid. It should be the parent or of someone they know. Yeah. It's gonna be in their own house, unfortunately. Unfortunately. So then so my my little hypothesis here that I've been building. Oh, yeah. This is all leading up. Is that the babysitter now, the idea of hiring like a 10-year-old kid to take care of your kids, it was like this how is the 10-year-old gonna fight the m the murderer?
SPEAKER_02There's some tenacious 10-year-olds out there.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you know, it's like, how are they how is this gonna work? This is too risky. Um and I think that's what w everything I've read suggests that the the this old practice of hiring young kids to watch your kids is no longer considered uh a good parenting.
SPEAKER_02That's the thing. Like I think that if you know, like especially I'm not a parent, um, don't plan on being one, but uh I always say I've I've logged a lot of hours in the simulator working with children as long as I have. I think a lot of parents would still leave their kids, you know, not for nine hours a day, but for um shorter periods of time with 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds, but now it's so frowned upon. I think that's that's policing more so than uh most people would like to imagine. Like I I'd want to. I I can. If no one would find out about it, I would totally do this. Because it's cheaper. And it's so much cheaper. You know, if you like I wouldn't leave a an a newborn with a ten year old, but I think I'd leave like my seven year old with one and be like But people used to do that. But now I think that it's just you know, I hear stories about like ten year olds that are walking home and someone sees and You know, the police get called. Like, why is your ten year old walking around? Right. You know. You hear stories like that all the time, or like, you know, you can walk to the park and walk back mm eight-year-old, but um and the park is a block away, but then the next thing you know, there's a knock on your door and it's a policeman with your eight-year-old, and like, why are you doing this?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and it's um I ha gotta tell you, I have a problem with all of that.
SPEAKER_02I kinda do too. I mean, I don't and I do. I believe in safety and I believe in security, and I believe in um that there are not so great people out in the world. Uh, but I also believe that we're kind of depriving kids of autonomy and you know, that feeling of like, hey, I can go out in the world and I'll be okay by myself. Um, you hear stories and you're like, no, no, keep everyone home until they're 18.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. And that what I wanted to ask you is what do you think it does? What kind of um adults do these make?
SPEAKER_02I just think it's it's just making a bunch of adults who just don't feel safe by themselves.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02I yeah. That's one of the things I love about myself is that I um I can go to movies by myself, I can go to restaurants by myself, and I'm totally fine with that. But I think uh a lot of the generations bef uh like after me are struggling more with that kind of stuff. It's or if I am out by myself, I have to have like a camera documenting, you know, I gotta get the likes for, you know, because then I don't feel so alone that I'm out on by myself.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's interesting. So that's one of the functions of social media, then it's like, hey, I'm not alone. Not by myself. I'm not by myself. I'm sharing this um, you know, I'm eating this cold pizza over the sink like a rat under a 40-watt bulb, but I'm doing it on screen. People are with me. They're giving me likes. Um Wow. Okay, so yeah, I wonder about that. Because I always I think about like the things that I thought my parents could have done better and how that affected me. But I also know that um being an independent and confident person requires experience as a child, uh having those at least some of those those moments. Um but I will tell you, as a parent of two young girls when they were little, um I I put restrictions. I mean, didn't I wasn't an overscheduler or a helicopter parent, but I did like if they wanted to ride bikes, I would sit out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I wouldn't say they, you know, but I would sit out there with them. And so, and you know, I was I always knew where they were. I would not just say, like my mother would say, get out of the house.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05She wouldn't say where to where to get out or what to do or what we couldn't do is just like get out of the house. Sometimes they would say something like, Don't go to the construction site, which of course we would do. Do you know so one time I had I there were some weird kids when I was little, and one kid, so one time a friend of a friend like, hey, come, we have this interesting group. We're all like seven years old, so okay. So I show up, there's a kid wearing a suit, also seven. So what what what are you doing in a suit?
SPEAKER_02So the kids in a suit have a little briefcase.
SPEAKER_05He had no, he had a briefcase and he opens it and he calls us gentlemen. A gentleman? So what was this whole caper? We would run around in new construction homes like that. We're not completely finished. I don't really know what the the idea was we were running around, we didn't do any like mischief. We just ran around in these houses that were half built and that we weren't supposed to be in.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_05And he had like the plan. We're today we're doing this house, or we're gonna do this house. And it was just like, why still what's the with the suit? Um so but the my mother would sometimes like, don't go to this alligator pit or something. Make sure and then of course we would. Well, yes. And then we would, of course, get hurt. Like we'd lose a leg or something. But you wouldn't I mean today if you lost a leg at the alligator place, you would ha your parents would sue. All hell breaks loose, yeah. But but now but then it was like you had to hide the fact that you no longer had a leg.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, it was it was the your fault.
SPEAKER_05Because you would get your ass kicked.
SPEAKER_02Don't don't stick your f your leg in the alligator pit.
SPEAKER_05And it'd be like you're you're lucky it was only one leg you lost.
SPEAKER_02Back in my day.
SPEAKER_05Back in my day, you would have lost a head and shut up about it. You'd be like, well, yeah, well, if you don't have a head. Anyway, yeah, I do think about like kids growing up who haven't had a moment it because it's it's the it's the watching and controlling and also the scheduling of time. I just see like it's all about keeping a tight grip. And I'm wondering if you noticed that in your work.
SPEAKER_02I worked for a family years ago where like the kids' time was was so heavily regimented, and they had two kids, and one was like a super and like under both ten and under. Um and one was like just very like an overachiever, just like always like everything was performance-based.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Like, look how well I'm doing.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, everything was that. Um she but she just didn't have very many friends. Um and then the the the youngest one who again was still under 10. Right. Um, I believe he was like eight or nine, he was just a bottle of anxiety. Like he would cry. He would come home from school and he would cry as he did his homework.
SPEAKER_05Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02But he would be like, hey, buddy, you can like take a break here. Why don't you have a snack or whatever? And he'd be like, No, I have to finish this. And it was it was really devastating to watch. And I remember talking to the parent and being like, Hey, you know, maybe because she would have his homework and then she'd have extra homework she wanted him to do. Right. And I'd be like, He comes home from school and he does homework for two hours and he's kind of cracking up a little bit, you know. Maybe we can reel it back. And she was, of course, like was like, Come in here, Toby. That was his name, but she was like, you know, are you is too much homework? Is it are you, you know, whatever? And he's like, No, it's fine. And she's like, Okay. And like that was the end of it.
SPEAKER_05End of the story. Yeah, it's fine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love homework.
SPEAKER_05Peeling off his skin. Yeah. By the way, don't name a kid Toby.
SPEAKER_01I know that wasn't a real name Toby listening just now.
SPEAKER_05Uh yeah, single Toby. It's you're cool, but if you have a choice, don't name a kid Toby. Any other interesting encounters with kids or parents that uh were meaningful to you or memorable?
SPEAKER_02As far as helicopter parents, I had a parent, and this was the worst job I ever had. It was awful. This was over ten years ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh with this family, and the mom would cry every time she had to leave her kids.
SPEAKER_05What?
SPEAKER_02But the weird thing was like kids having like, you know, separation anxiety. It's just totally normal.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Um, and so they would cry when their mom would leave. And uh she would then like sit on the floor and cry with them. And like not in a like, oh, you know, you're supposed to mimic um emotions for your children to kind of show like emotions are good, fine. But this was just very codependent and bonkers. And um It doesn't sound good. I would be like, when you when you leave the house, you know, just don't leave, just like say bye and leave, and then you can hang out in the garage for a second if you're worried about how they'll be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then, you know, if it's if it goes on long enough, come back in, you know, you can be here. And she just was uh like refused to do that. And she would they would just every goodbye was literally 40 to 45 minutes long, of like her sobbing on the floor curled up. And then she would leave, and five minutes later her kids would be gone. They were like it almost felt like they were kind of relieved that the drama was over. Oh yeah, and they could just start playing with Play-Doh.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, what an emotional sort of straitjacket for them.
SPEAKER_02It really was. It was the one time in my life I was ever like, Do you call child protective service? Like, but they were they were well fed and um, you know, they lived in a nice house with had zero furniture, but it was a nice house.
SPEAKER_05You know, like it wasn't they weren't being abused physically, but sitting on the floor crying, and a lot of times when I hear these stories, it's like on the one hand, yeah, it's pretty tragic in a way and sad. But also then I think of my own parents and like that never would have happened. No. My parents would go off to Europe for weeks and leave us with fill in the blank. It literally, it would be just like, here's a person who's gonna be living here now. Bye. Yeah. We'll see you in six weeks and we'll have a slideshow. I think today, and this is you were touching on this before, is that if you hire a 10 or 12 year old to watch your kids and something bad happens, people will look at that and go, What were you thinking? Yeah. Of course that happened. Where back then it would just be like normal. Shrug.
SPEAKER_02My very first babysitting job was fifty cents an hour. I made a dollar a day, and it was a 10-hour day. And uh Wait. Wait, hold on. That's not right. Step step back.
SPEAKER_01Hold on.
SPEAKER_05Step back, Matthew.
SPEAKER_01Wait, no, I made No, just just believe everything I say. Also leave your kids alone overnight with anybody.
SPEAKER_02I made 50 bucks a week, 10 hour days. What is that? A dollar an hour.
SPEAKER_05I'm not falling into this sick trap mental noses driven.
SPEAKER_02Uh for yeah, it was me and two little kids. They live right by a lake. I'll always remember this because I take them out to play, and I remember this one kid would just put a bucket on his head and just like run around the lake, and it was just like, well, he sees occupied. Like, I'll always remember that. But I still remember just like being like, why was I doing this so cheap? I was 16. Yeah. So it's totally interested in your story. But I wanted to.
SPEAKER_05No, no, but that's what you got paid, and it was cool. Like, it was like, I guess this is okay. This is kind of a good way to make money because at that age there's not a lot of choices. No. Uh and uh my father actually gave me a really good way to earn money, uh much better money than I could make babysitting or doing anything else, and I didn't do it. He so he had to wear shiny shoes at his job. So he had a job where your shoes had to be shined. And he had like three or four pairs of different kinds of shoes that had to be shined. And he said, if you shine my shoes every week, I'll give you 50 cents a pair.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And that was actually a lot of money. Yeah, and it was five million dollars at the end of a week. And when the hourglass runs out of time, the witch is gonna kill Dorothy. I I I'll show my work later. Um So uh but I didn't want to do it because I was so oppositional.
SPEAKER_02That's a lost art, I think, that we all have lost is shining shoes. Aaron Ross Powell Oh man. Do people still like do wealthy people like shine their shoes now?
SPEAKER_05They just throw their shoes out. Yeah. And they buy new shoes that are it's all they come shined, and as soon as the shine gets they just throw them in the trash and they laugh hysterically.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell I think I you know what? I like I think I'm gonna go buy some shoe polish and just get out all my shoes and just shine them all up.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Powell So I once had a job where I had to have shiny shoes.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Is this like really is this something that people would come by and be like, your shoes aren't shiny, son, go home.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, well there was this whole thing, and and I don't know if it's still a thing, but if you want to like know what a person like you just look at their shoes and you can tell by the quality of the shoes. And you can I gotta tell you something though. I was just now, you see how I'm dressed. I'm wearing a black shirt and kind of light-colored pants, which I normally never wear.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell I don't I this is the sloppiest I've ever seen you dressed. Sloppy is not what I thought I looked like when I walked out the door. Well, compared to like usually you dress very well. Oh, well, thank you. And then like you showed up and I was like, oh, I'm sorry. Didn't know that we were supposed to wear pajamas. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Well, this is all good feedback for me. So I thought I looked okay. But anyway, the point of this little tangent is I'm walking on the street, I see a guy with the exact same clothes. Okay. Same everything. And I say to him, Hey, we're dressed alike. And what does he say? Nothing. Yeah. Well, because he was ashamed. Maybe he thought, oh, you're saying I'm a slob. See, I didn't think, but that was before I knew I was dressed sloppy.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Anyway. Well, now we're going to be able to do that. Here's the question.
SPEAKER_02This is you said we could have some tangents. We do. Because I was thinking about this recently. Is it now that it's harder to tell like a person who has a lot of money versus someone who is doing okay? Like there's not that huge of a you can't there's just I think now we all everyone's like everyone's kind of dressing down.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02Um but then also it's not cool anymore, I guess, to show to be flashy, to be like, look at my Rolex.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02I don't but uh, you know, I live in Portland, Oregon, so who knows?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. This isn't representative of the rest of the world. Some places it's some enclaves, it's okay to be conspicuous consumers.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But um yeah, yeah, I think you're right in in at different times, and it's been shown in different typically when there's economic stress kind of widespread that it's not cool to be flashy about it. I think there's also something else at play which you're touching on, which is people are just more casual.
SPEAKER_02People are more casual, and I think that we have more access to better knockoffs.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think that's like a a a truism because it's it's harder to tell who's got the really expensive shoes. This is coming though from me who couldn't have told you, like an expensive pair of shoes from you know bare feet. So Right. But you could tell a shiny shoe. I could tell a shiny shoe. But I would probably be like, what you doing with those shiny shoes there, kid?
SPEAKER_05I once had a job. I once had a job. Yeah, those are the real shiny shoes. A tap tap shoes. You like the tap shoes? I gave away my tap shoes during the pandemic. Really? Because I said, uh, you know, my tapping days, that's that I'm probably not gonna be called for a a dance call anymore. Uh-huh. You know?
SPEAKER_02That's the one thing that I would love to learn. I think I would be a fantastic tap dancer.
SPEAKER_05If you tap dance, I don't care where you're doing it, I'm gonna come to the front row and I'm gonna be enjoying the hell out of that.
SPEAKER_02I just love that a lot of it is like I'm I'm like it's loose hips, but like straight body, and then just smile.
SPEAKER_05It's your face will sell it.
SPEAKER_02There's joy in tapping.
SPEAKER_05There's joy in tapping, and if nothing else comes of this podcast, I'm hoping that you will go out, get yourself some shiny tap shoes, and get busy. Shiny shoes. Shiny shoes. So I'm getting so I had this job where I I I believe that my shoes should be shine. So I was at an airport and they have shoe shine stands at the airport. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've seen this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't know if they have those anymore, but I've seen them around.
SPEAKER_05They even have one here in Portland. I know the person I have a acquaintanceship. No. Well, that's the point of my story. So I'm sitting there, this is in Houston, Texas, and I'm getting a shoe shine before I get on my flight. And uh the guy is shining my shoes, and this other guy comes walking by and he starts yelling at me, saying, Look at you. You think you're so great. Making this guy shine your shoes. Like, who are you? You can't even shine your own shoes. And he just goes through this whole tirade as he walks by. And I'm thinking about it, and I turn to the shoe shine person and I go, uh, are you okay shining my shoes? He goes, Yeah, this is how I make my money. Yeah. And I thought it was very insulting for someone to like disparage someone else's chosen work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That had nothing to do with that guy who was shining shoes. That everything to do with that guy and how his life sucks. That's what I always think when people are just giant assholes for no reason. I know. And every time I hear somebody woken up and your life must suck. That is sucked. That's the only way you can have power or feel good is to make someone feel less than. And really, that doesn't usually make someone feel less than. It just makes you look more like a jerk.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it makes it every ever the more clear that your life is horrifying.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like your wife doesn't love you.
SPEAKER_05That is such an important perspective. Yeah, your wife or your work wife, but that's such an important perspective. And other people have said that to me, and I never had that frame of reference, and it's so powerful to realize that someone to be that unpleasant has so much like unhappiness in them.
SPEAKER_02So full of hurt and rage. Yeah, they the only way they can try to make them feel oh like I I just know that all the times in my life that I have been a complete jerk have been the times in my life that I have felt the worst about myself and my life. Right. And uh, and you just hurt, you know, that whole hurt people hurt people. Like you just go out and you're just mean to people because you are mean. I've never been happy as a clam, high on life, and gone out and been like, hey, jerk face, look at you and your in your sloppy outfit. No.
SPEAKER_05Wait a minute, that did happen. Oh crap. Uh yeah, but that's a really good way to reframe that. And it kind of makes it less toxic, I think, in terms of your own reactions to realize, oh, this person is just a sad-sacking loser. Speaking of Kyle Krupnik, so this kid, I mean, he was okay and everything, but his house was haunted. And I just remember so I'm there late at night, I could become convinced as a 10-year-old that the house is haunted. Do you believe in ghosts? I here's what I believe in. I believe in empiricism.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_05So if I if you show me a ghost, I will believe it.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_05But if you don't show me a ghost, then I'll say, I'm not ready to believe it. But I'm open to it. Okay. I just need to see it.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I I just need to see it. Okay.
SPEAKER_05It's like I think anything is possible in an infinite universe. There's a podcast going on between you and me, except we have hamster heads. Everything is the same, but we have hamster heads, which might be an improvement. So Kyle Krupnick.
SPEAKER_01No, there's no- and there's no story here.
SPEAKER_05And I didn't have change for the meter.
SPEAKER_01So but remember, every story has to end in someone died. Yeah, so I had to suffocate Kyle. After all this time, you have to make this so good. Otherwise, people are going to be like, That's right.
SPEAKER_05I had to suffocate him because we didn't have time to get to the fallout shelter. Sorry, Kyle. Uh just doing what your parents wanted. No, I just realized I couldn't babysit because the house was haunted. Also, they said, don't let the dogs escape. And of course, the dogs got out and ran away. What's that? Yeah, the dogs knew what was up. The dogs always know. And so I had to call my mother and say that the house is haunted, the dogs ran away. So she had to come over and we had to wrangle the dogs and make sure the house wasn't haunted and that Kyle wasn't like in his room, like hanging. So from a meat hook. So once then she went home, and then the parent but I realized, okay, this is not for me. That was my only babysitting adventure. So I did, but I hired uh quite a few babysitters because this was before uh parents were scared to leave their kids with babies. So I was still doing this. I would hire neighborhood kids to come over, and you know, there was, you know, some kids are pretty good. You know, they would come over and they would play games, they would clean up. And apparently now kids, if they come over at all, they're like, I'm not doing anything.
SPEAKER_02No, it's pretty much just like here's the remote.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, like I will sit in a chair and watch TV or play video games. What the kids do, bucket or no bucket, I I I'm not about that. But I will be here physically. And some parents are still okay with that. We were uh we got a little bit better service than that, but one time we hired this person down the street, and they were really good. Like they're a really good babysitter. And uh so they do the gig and at the uh and we pay whatever we paid. And I felt at the time, I don't remember what it was, but I felt it was 35 cents. Uh but I don't know what it was actually we paid, but I thought it was kind of like on the high end, like hey, we're you know, flipping out that they want to make it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So I I because I've always believed like, you know, you want to pay people at the higher end when they're doing a service, because you know, you want to find your kids when you get home.
SPEAKER_02If they don't value their time, why should you?
SPEAKER_05Exactly. So and vice versa. So then so then the next day, the mom of this kid calls me. And she goes, We think you should be paying more. And I'm like, really? Oh, I thought we were paying pretty good compared to what, you know. But anyway, what what's your proposal? And I did the math in the sense that I Googled what the amount she was asking for would be worth per hour today. And the math said $35 an hour is what the person in today's money. And I said to her, to the mom, I'm like, uh that's more money than like a lot of people make who have like a college education. So I'm like, your kid's 12. I don't think I should be paying $35 an hour. Yeah. Because like for a three-hour date night, that's over a hundred bucks. Yeah. And she was adamant. So good on the mom. She was really good. Like, no, my kid is awesome.
SPEAKER_02But here's the question: was she taking the money?
SPEAKER_05Or wasn't the kid could be case? Oh, she's like an agent.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, no, it sounds like, yeah, like she's just like, hey, I get 15% of this.
SPEAKER_05So you gotta pay.
SPEAKER_01I never thought of that.
SPEAKER_02Because 15% of $35 isn't enough dollars for mama to get herself some cinnamon. So hurry up with this.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Powell, I mean, on the one hand, I I congratulate them both, but I never hired her again because I just felt like, well, this is too much. Yeah. But now, in today's world, it would probably be like, yeah, if you're gonna get someone really good, you gotta pay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's I I would say right now, like nannies, at least in Port Longan, it gets up higher if you like you go to New York or LA, you're making bank. Um, but yeah, it's 35 and like the m minimum, I think, right now for nannies is 18 to 20 is the minimum.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, that makes sense. It just goes up higher. For a a grown person.
SPEAKER_02Well, they you know how do you consider it like an 18-year-old, like a grown person?
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02Really? I guess the law does.
SPEAKER_05They can vote, they can go to war, they can order large coffee. They cannot get uh booze, but they can take your kid. They can in Nebraska, you only have to be seven to get a drink there, apparently. And drive a tractor and babysit.
SPEAKER_02All at the same time.
SPEAKER_05Some of that may not be true. Um but I think that's why you see a lot of free-range kids around because parents don't want to pay that money.
SPEAKER_02So they're bringing their kids and turning them loose.
SPEAKER_05They don't want to or they can't.
SPEAKER_02Both.
SPEAKER_05But then they're but then they turn the kids loose in a restaurant. We did a show on that earlier. An earlier episode was on free-range kids. They bring their kids and they turn them loose. I just at the coffee shop today I saw a lady just turn her kids loose and they're running all around, running amok, mugging everybody, and the lady's just, oh, I'm on my phone, so I don't know what's happening. I'm in my phone bubble. You know, we were talking about kids growing up and they maybe don't have the same sense of independence or confidence in the world when they're turned loose if they ever are. And I think there was some value in being told that you sucked as a kid, which I don't think we do as much. Like you're actually not that great at baseball. Yeah. Whatever it was, like you don't get to play because you kind of stink.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And now it's sort of like, don't ever tell somebody. I was just talking to a parent who was telling me a story about their sister or something, and they are not allowed to tell their children no. They can never use the word no. You're just looking at me like, what do you think of that? Yeah. Like, how does it even work? You can never say no.
SPEAKER_02So there's uh I think there's a a train of a theory of thinking right now that I think has some value.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02Of uh kids are just stupid. This is this is my way of saying it. But they're stupid for a reason. They just haven't experienced things, they haven't experienced life, they don't know rules or such yet. And that you need to kind of give freedom to children freedom to fuck up so that they kind of learn how to do things. And one way of doing that is just to let kids do, to leave them alone. Kind of almost what we were saying earlier is just like goodbye, kid. Go the doors the doors closed until eight o'clock, until the lights go down, go off into the world. Right. Uh and so don't say no to kids, let them figure it out on their own, essentially.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um I think that you know, like any kind of theory, there's good and there's bad and and those things. There's gotta be parameters. Um and there's gotta be no's.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I don't I really don't want to fall into the trap that everyone falls into as well. Uh it was better when we were kids. Because I don't know if it was better to like be love-starved. Because I mean, that's how I got into performing, is that I it's like constantly seeking other people's love.
SPEAKER_01I have a fantastic personality now because I was like, I had to entertain myself. You do have a fantastic personality.
SPEAKER_02You're a I had to like get out there and be like, someone, please pay attention to me. And I'm gonna do it by being charming.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell One of your uh yes, you are very charming and dynamic human, and you also are a great performer, and you're one of the few performers that can walk out on a stage and say nothing and get full attention and focus and get people laughing just by inhabiting the space in an awkward or comes from such a gorgeous fount of want inside me, an example of need, yeah. Exactly. That the best performer and we've we were talking um in a recent episode about where humor comes from for some of us who use humor as a tool for whatever reason, and it's always almost always comes from a little sad place somewhere. And uh if not for that, we you know the people that I know that like our had super uh well-adjusted happy childhoods, they aren't funny. No. And they don't tell good stories, and they never even met Kyle Crumb there. I don't know what they're missing. So uh I guess to close, I'll just ask you do you think we're uh like basically there's that's we've reached the death of babysitting that or the babysitting as it used to be is never gonna come back.
SPEAKER_02Everything swings, it swings aroundabouts, it's all gonna come back for sure. I think it's definitely a thing that uh especially the more that we're supposed to make and maintain. Like I have a feeling we're gonna start sending kids to work a lot faster. I mean, you already see it with all these YouTube stars that are like, I'm a 10-year-old, I'm you know, opening boxes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05The micro influencers.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. People are monetizing their infants right now. And so it's just that's a different problem, I think.
SPEAKER_05That's a good one. That's another show we're gonna have to do.
SPEAKER_02It goes right back to the sweatshops. We're just gonna go back there, you know, with all these, you know.
SPEAKER_05I can see uh robot babysitters coming.
SPEAKER_02Really? I don't think that will I mean I am a heavy believer in the snoo. I don't know if you've heard of a snoo. Remind me. A snoo is a new bassinet. And it's a bassinet that you put your baby in. It has like a little special pouch you put your baby in.
SPEAKER_05And it suffocates at it. No.
SPEAKER_02You you clip the pouch into the bassinet and then the bassinet uh rocks your baby to sleep. And then if any time your baby wakes and stirs, it senses that and it kind of jiggles it around. And snoo babies are are the best nappers and the easiest going babies ever. Like if you are around a snoo baby, you know you're in the presence of a snoo. I should not be using the word snoo unless you're gonna get some money from it, but uh it is a truly a genius.
SPEAKER_05So you learned it here, folks.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Get your snoo. But is it a chicken and an egg problem? Are the babies that you can hook up to this automatic thing? Are they just more likely to be they just sleep better? Better. Uh but they might have but in other words, are we self-selecting and so the baby's uh just the kind of baby who's gonna do better in a snoo, but if you get a colicky baby, the snoo it wouldn't matter because the kid would bust out of it and break it and run around the house. There's no breaking out of a snoo. Oh, it's it's it's it's it's a personal restraint.
SPEAKER_02Literally, it's like it's they you are clipped into this.
SPEAKER_05It's making me feel claustrophobic right now, thinking about this.
SPEAKER_02You know what I would love is new. And here's the thing I think we don't get as adults. No one rocks us. They like there's something very rhythmic about being rocked. And like we all love like you know, and I think that that's something we lose as adults. I think that they need to make adult snooze.
SPEAKER_05That is, we're inventing that right now. All right. Get ready to be rich. Extra, extra. This is this is the thing that happened just in front right now. Yeah. We're inventing the adult snoo.
SPEAKER_02I think there's so many things. I think I like that's why um those what are those float tanks are. Oh, the century deprivation type tanks. We all just want to go back to the tit. It's just all we really want to do. So back to the tit.
SPEAKER_05Back to the tit. I knew this somehow was gonna end in a sex thing.
SPEAKER_02Why would you make that sexual?
SPEAKER_05I don't know.
SPEAKER_02See, right there. We have so many.
SPEAKER_05I need a snoot.
SPEAKER_02That's the beginning and the end of all of it.
SPEAKER_05I need a snoo tit. I uh something. I think that's another, and that's gonna be the other that'll be like an extra. Um Yeah. I yeah. The other thing I that never happens that I personally like is uh I like having my head stroked. But to ask for that as a grown person is a little awkward.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I love having my forehead kissed.
SPEAKER_05Okay, well, that's a little more like you can ask for that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's still one of those things like kiss my forehead.
SPEAKER_05Kiss my forehead.
SPEAKER_02Kiss me, come on, kiss my forehead.
SPEAKER_05Kyle Krupnik, come over here.
SPEAKER_01Awesome forehead kisses.
SPEAKER_05Kyle baby. Get out that snoo. Hey. Get off that snoo tent and come over here and kiss my forehead, and I'll give you 35 cents. Well, I just want to thank you, Jenny, for doing this. This has been great. I think we've all learned a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00Some of them please look up before you do any of them.
SPEAKER_05Yes, please do not come to this podcast for information that you can use.
SPEAKER_0150 cents an hour for 10 bucks a week.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And all math is welcome here. We will not check your work. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for this episode. It has been a delight, Jenny. So I really do appreciate you're such a fun person. And I know you're going to be back, and I will dress differently. And my shoes will be shine.
SPEAKER_02I want to see you in that little suit that guy was wearing, that little kid was wearing.
SPEAKER_05The kid had a suit and a briefcase, and that was so unusual. I was just, every time I would meet a kid like that, I just was always like, what is this kid? Where did they come from? These kids, they just like it was just always so amazing. We're gonna ask you to please follow the show on Instagram and Twitter, and if you can rate us and review us, it helps us grow our teeny show into a bigger teeny show. And all of you listening are greatly appreciated and warmly welcome here wherever you may be. And we hope you'll tune in to another episode because whether you are sitting on the floor crying with your children or just riding on a city bus with 35 cents in your pocket, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.