(The names of all non-family members have been changed)

There are some family stories that get retold so many times, to so many different people, that at some point the tales cease to be a collection of facts and instead morph into lore. There was the time my mom swam way way out in the ocean with kid me in a raft. There was the time my pre-puberscent brother put on a historic Hannukah magic show for the family.  The time I told the telemarketers that my dad was dead. And, when we were slightly older, this.

One of my parents' favorite bits of Mattiti lore is that, as a kid, I declared loudly and proudly that when I grew up, I wanted to be a professional babysitter.

Now, I wholly agree that's funny. I mean, right off the bat, who did I see as the amateur baby-sitters?  Those people taking care of me for free weren't babysitters, those were family members. Where did I get the idea that babysitting was a a competitive occupation where only a chosen few reached the elusive peak of going pro. Additionally, I didn't arrive at this choice of occupation after many successful babysitting experiences. No. Rather, I made this declaration well before I had any actual child-care experience. So, in essence, one of two things has to be true:
1. I loved the experience of my parents leaving the house so much that I wanted to make a career out of it.
2. I loved the time I spent being taken care of by my babysitters so much that I wanted to provide that service to other kids like me.
Maybe it was a combination of the two.

Finally, when I was about 15, I got my shot at the big time. Sophie Rosenthal, mother of two and one of my family's close friends from the synagogue, was looking for someone to stay with her children while she and her husband went out for the night. Sophie asked my mother if I would be interested in looking after David, age 10, and Anna, age 6.

Hells yah I wanted to babysit. I don't think my mom even asked me before she told Sophie that I'd love to.