I am a lousy cook. I don’t mean inept or indifferent. I mean lousy. I’ve ruined canned chicken noodle soup. (I turned on the wrong burner and melted the bottom out of Mom’s Tupperware cake transporter. Three years later, browned white plastic still clings to the burner.) So when I signed on for a summer job as a nanny, I swallowed awfully hard when I realized I’d have to cook three meals a day for three girls and myself.
When I first started work, though, it didn’t seem too hard. After all, four people can eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast, slap together sandwiches for lunch, and split two cans of Spaghetti-O’s for dinner. As long as I kept little Samantha (age six,) Nikki (age nine,) and Taylor (age seven) from blabbing to their respective families (Taylor and Nikki are sisters; Samantha is a schoolmate who lives nearby) about what passed for nutrition under my regime, we were just fine. Hey, when you pay your nanny what I got paid, you really can’t complain about a lack of gourmet cooking.
Anyway, I had things besides cooking on my hands most of the time. Every day, there were at least three skirmishes between some combination of Nikki, Taylor, and Samantha that I had to quash, sometimes with the Tickle Monster, sometimes with the Time-Out Monster.
Even though I make the girls sound like monsters themselves sometimes, they were actually pretty sweet kids. We did different art projects together every day. Also, even though I don’t like to let the TV do my job for me, we watched movies, the ones I thought would open up new worlds for the girls, make them think, make them imagine. One day, we had a Star Wars movie festival, watching the original trilogy all in a row. After we’d watched those, Nikki, Taylor, and Samantha were dying to see the recently-released Episode I, so I made arrangements for us to go see the film one Friday.
As Nikki and Taylor’s mother, Ginna, was leaving the house on Episode I Day, as we called it, she said, "Oh, and Cynthia, there’s some ground turkey in the fridge that needs to be cooked today."
I sighed as I locked up after her. Then, as is my standard policy with problems I won’t have to confront for a while, I promptly forgot about it and immersed myself in the business of the day.
The movie went well even though we made about six trips to the bathroom -- I knew the large Cokes were a mistake before they were even paid for. The Twizzlers probably weren’t such a great idea, either; by the time we were home, the girls were practically swinging from the light fixtures. As dinner time approached, I finally resorted to turning on a Growing Pains rerun on the Disney Channel and commanding, "Sit! Stay!"
I left them engrossed in the antics of the Seavers and went to prepare dinner. Opening the refrigerator, I found myself staring at a foam tray laden with ground turkey. Ginna’s words came flooding back to me: "It needs to be cooked today!"
For a moment, I panicked. Then, as I was browsing through the pantry, I discovered a box of spaghetti. Spaghetti and meatballs! Yes! I could surely make that! How hard could it be? I called my mom, confided that I was going to attempt making meatballs, and asked her how she made hers.
After she stopped laughing, she gave me the instructions. "Take the turkey, add a half-cup of seasoned breadcrumbs [here I rummaged in the pantry,] one egg, slightly beaten, and mix all together. Roll into balls and place in skillet. [loud clang of pans falling from cabinet] Cover the skillet and cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until done. Remove the meatballs from the pan and drain the grease off. Pour spaghetti sauce over the meatballs and heat until the sauce is warm. Okay, sweetie? Buh-bye."
This is the edited version of the recipe; you’ll just have to imagine all the "[Insert child’s name], stop it" and "Could you all possibly share the markers?" and "I want to hear Mom, not MTV -- hey, you aren’t even supposed to be watching MTV!" digressions. (Also the mutters of "I am not being paid nearly enough to do this.")
Just after I’d turned the stove on (after double-checking which burner I flipped on,) I heard crying in the living room. I let it continue for a moment -- Samantha reacts to everything, including changes in relative humidity, by crying -- and when it didn’t subside, reluctantly intervened. As it turned out, Samantha was crying because she was convinced that she would someday be older than Taylor, who is about four months older than she. The older girls tried to explain the truth, but she only cried and appealed to the Cynthia Circuit Court. Sighing, I explained that I couldn’t argue with Mother Nature, which only made her wail, "I want my mommy and daddy!"
"They’ll tell you you’re wrong, too," I replied nonchalantly.
Not receiving instant capitulation (Samantha’s a bit spoiled), she howled, "I want a baby-sitter all to myself!"
Still unmoved, I replied, "And you know what? She’ll tell you you’re wrong, too!" This slightly undiplomatic response brought on a real fit, one that made me forget the meatballs I had on the stove until their consistency resembled charcoal briquettes.
Grimly, I served them anyway, my expression daring the girls to complain. Taylor ate all of hers, though, and pretended to like them -- something I’m still grateful for.
As I was cleaning up that day, I found some notecards from a report I’d given my sophomore year about the wage gap between the sexes (Nikki played school with them.) The one I picked up read, "It is shameful that America pays its child-care providers less than its parking-lot attendants." Muttering agreement, I shoved the card into Nikki’s desk and went to wash the dishes.
Back to Stuff I Wrote.
© Cynthia 2002.