My parents both worked Friday and Saturday nights until late and they had a series of babysitters.

Some babysitters were family but most were teenagers, the older kids of friends. Of course, that was when we had babysitters… sometimes we’d wake up and the house would be empty… more on that episode, later.

We had one babysitter for a while. I must have liked her because I remember her name – Alison. Alison was slim, with long blonde-ish hair. She was pretty and didn’t wear make-up when she came over to us. I seem to recall she was our regular Friday night babysitter, but I could be wrong.

This would be more as I remember Alison’s style:

Because my parents came back home from work at gone 3am and sometimes 4am, the babysitters stayed over for the night rather than being woken up and taken home.

I can’t recall whether my father took them home the next day or if they got picked up, but I seem to recall Alison got picked up by her boyfriend towards the end of her babysitting for us.

She was what I’d call a ‘good babysitter’ because she was kind, responsible and yet lenient. Sometimes we’d get to stay up and watch a movie if we’d been good… sometimes I would be allowed to stay up and my brother and sister had to go to bed.

That was SUCH a rare treat because even though I was five years older than my sister, our bedtime was the same.

Alison started seeing a boy and they got ‘going steady’ and she decided she no longer wanted to babysit for us. Yeah, we missed her, but I understood.

The regular Saturday night babysitter (I cannot recall her name) was more ‘flirty’ (that was how I perceived her as a child). She was more curvy and wore make-up and different, more ‘going-out’ clothes than Alison had worn.

She also liked boys.

One evening, she sat on the front step of our house. The lights on the street were just coming on, so it was around twilight, I suppose. The older boys on the street, the older brothers of my younger brother’s friends started coming past the house.

Our babysitter started chatting to them and the older boys got closer.

Because I was the oldest of our family’s children and so much younger than those boys, they had never shown any interest before. As I said, their younger brothers were friends with my younger brother, but that’s where it ended. The age-difference between me and those boys was four, five and sometimes six years, so those boys could have been anything up to sixteen.

Those boys had never even spoken to me that I can recall. The night I’m speaking of, they not only started talking to us, they were invited into the house and they actually accepted and came in.

My mother didn’t like the kids coming into our house. She may have been a little ashamed that we didn’t have as much as the other families (no one had much as I recall) or it may have been the fact that we were always ‘in a mess’ – untidy. If friends did come around, we were absolutely FORBIDDEN to go upstairs to play. Not even my closest friends were allowed up there!

The boys came into the house. My brother’s coolest friend and his older brother, plus one or two others from the street.

Music was put on the record player and we were so unused to this that we were determined to make the absolute most of the situation. I don’t remember if the drinks cabinet was raided or sampled. I didn’t raid or sample it, but that babysitter certainly used to. “Shh, it’s our little secret, don’t tell your mum and dad cos they’ll not let me come to babysit again…”

We all ended up getting really boisterous and I think things started to get out of hand. The boys wanted our babysitter to flash her boobs and she was being all coy, yet still flirty. I don’t believe she was much older than the boys, but she certainly enjoyed all the attention.

When it was time to put my little sister to bed, it would seem that everyone decided it was also time to move the party upstairs. I cannot remember how we all ended up upstairs in the room I shared with her, but against all convention and all the rules my mother laid down for us, everyone ended up sitting on our beds.

The babysitter was wearing a halter-neck top (I remember that because she explained that it wasn’t an ‘alter-neck’ but ‘halter’).

The top was being untied from the back because the boys found it amusing to hear her protests. I can still recall that her body-language was more, “I shouldn’t, but I’d like to,” rather than, “No! I don’t like this at all!”

Then the top finally came untied and it was yanked off. The only things that stopped her being fully topless was her quick reaction and the fact that the top was still tied at the back of her neck.

Then the atmosphere changed. It wasn’t a subtle change, it went from boisterous, flirty and fun to, “Oh bloody hell, a line has been crossed and this has to stop now!” It wasn’t just us, the kids and the babysitter that felt that alteration, the boys did too. They were kind of naïve still and they knew it wasn’t right.

It was just like the fun was switched OFF! Everything stopped. The boys went home, we calmed down immediately and my younger sister and brother went to bed.

I stayed up a little while, but I knew she was deeply embarrassed.

The boys didn’t come back. She remained as our regular Saturday night babysitter for a while longer, but she never invited the boys back – and I’m pretty sure she didn’t wear that top again, either…

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