Leta’s babysitter has been canceling on us a bit lately because her car keeps breaking down or she has an activity at school that requires she stay late. She’s still in high school and is the complete opposite of what I was like at that age: very cool and liked by her peers.
I think she’s fantastic, and she’s wonderful with Leta. I also love to talk to her when I come up from the basement to let her go home just to get a sense of what The Kids are up to these days. Once on a Monday evening as she was about to leave I asked her about her weekend, and in the trademark Utah accent of someone who has lived here and no where else she said, “Yah, you know that ex-boyfriend I told you about, well, he was text-messaging me all weekend, and I, you know, just ignored him and didn’t text-message him back.”
She ignored his TEXT-MESSAGES! OH MY GOD HOW OLD AM I? I was never so confident when that young, and I felt so, so old as I stood there remembering when phones were attached to walls and had spiral cords that restricted your wandering area to about 10 full feet. I spent years banging on my older sister’s door looking longingly at the cord strung so tightly from the kitchen to her room that it looked like it might POP if she moved one more inch. When I came back from my reverie I said to the babysitter, “You are SO hard core,” hoping to sound like I was born within at least the last 50 years.
Yesterday she cancelled again because her car stalled as she was exiting the freeway. “I thought your mom was going to get you a new car?” I asked her when she called to say she couldn’t make it.
She explained, “Yah, well my dad totally nixed that whole car thing.” And when I asked her why she said, “I dunno. He’s just so totally gay.”
And without thinking I said, “Yah, I totally hate it when that gay thing happens.”