call anytime

Lately I was thinking about baby-sitting:  a short-lived, part-time career I, like most teen-age girls in America, had briefly in my middle school and high school years.

Someone mentioned recently that since their TV has several remotes (large things, with a multiplicity of buttons on them), their baby-sitter called them once to ask -- something -- where the remote was, or how to work it...

I found myself kind of surprised about that:  I thought, ("Call up the people you're baby-sitting for to ask questions about a television remote - ??")

Never happen, in my version of the world.  But of course that was a different century.

Reviewing back, I tried to remember ever calling moms and dads whose children I was baby-sitting:  didn't happen.  (We didn't have any TV-remote "emergencies"...)

I remember, as a baby-sitter, feeling sort of -- alone and together, at the same time.  Together with the people's children, but alone in the sense of I was the only person responsible for them.  Calling up the parents -- about anything -- never crossed my mind.  Was fortunate enough not to ever have any dire situations, & -- I remember having a feeling that this time -- the two or three or five hours that the parents would be gone, was their private time.  They were "out" --

out on the town

maybe out OF town

out to dinner

out at the movies

out at some church deal

whatever...
they were

out,

and whatever it was in their absence, was my responsibility. 

Calling them up to ask questions about a television remote control was about the last thing I would have thought about doing. ...

Today, however, with cell phones everywhere, the culture of calling people has changed and people call, (and e-mail and "text") about little things, sometimes, I think.  Semi-constant contact is a condition which some people want, others put up with, and still others probably think they want for a while, & later find out they don't.

And the mom, in the present-day situation, probably leaves for an evening out with the cheerful, friendly phrase, "Call me if you need anything!"  And -- the baby-sitter needed to know how to work the remote, so she called the mom...'call me if you need anything'...would make perfect sense in modern context.

This also made me remember a phone conversation where someone ordered me, (rather harshly, I thought), "Don't call her!  She's at a dinner party!" 

(Geez -- stop the world, and I'll just get off.
I mean, sorry I blew up...
First of all, I called you, not her --
have no intention to call her at dinner party,
or wherever she might be,
don't go ballistic...)

And then it kind of fits together -- am thinking now, the party ordering me not to call someone I had no intention of calling was perhaps not wanting to harangue me, but was maybe feeling like the Culture Of Calling All The Time About Everything was not allowing the other person any free time to relax -- that theory I could understand and empathize with.  Maybe she was trying to protect the other person from ALL calls, not just the one I was never going to make. ...

Things get tangled.

Plus -- I looked up on Google, and part of the reason we never had trouble with TV remote controls when I was baby-sitting was because they hadn't been invented yet. ...(!)

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