It is a job I remember having when I was a much littler kid than having jobs -- so I must've been less than twelve -- and I know I was hired, remember being hired, for my parents' oversight, but: before you are a babysitter, you are a vacation pet and house watcher, no? Come over, here's how you turn on and off the security, feed kitten, water needyplant, see if everything's ok?

Or maybe my career was launched when the Taylors went away -- it was summer (it wasn't one of the winter ski vacations we never took) -- and I was to feed the cats, and one day I fed the cats and I heard something weird, and the cats were odd, and for some reason I went to the basement, which I found was four feet deep in water and water was spurting out of pipes.

and after that, people said 75 cents an hour!!! all right!!!

At all the rest of the neighborhood parties that year, they made me out as a big hero, and without telling Lindy and Jenny (maybe), they gave me -- I dunno, at least 20 dollars. Of course, I called them (who called plumbers), ran home, called my parents, who called plumbers and them.