right from the start, I gave you my heart

 

Julie Andrews in "The Sound Of Music"

The summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I had a job as a "summer girl," where you baby-sit, and help the mom clean, and stuff.

When I applied for it,  I thought maybe I would be like Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music but I wasn't - and they weren't.

Perhaps that was not "realistic."

...

The best times in that job were Saturday nights, when the wife (mom) went to the restaurant her husband owned and I was left with the little girls, one, three years old, and the other, one and a half.

I don't really remember what we did, but it was peaceful, with no impatient demands.

I would ask the three-year-old, Kimberly, Would you like to have a little orange juice and then go to bed? Or - have orange juice and read a story together, and then go to bed?

She would always choose juice and then the story, because then she could stay up later.

(The only books these people had in the house were children's books.)

And - juice - was a very big part of the daily routine. ...

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        The best time during that summer was when the family I worked for went on vacation for a week and during that same week I got picked up by my mom and dad and we went on vacation to Ohio where we used to live and visited with my mother's relatives.  

        When I went back to the job in Minnetonka, I went by train and it got behind because of - something - and I had to stay an extra night in Chicago at the Ritz Carleton because the train was late and they "put us up" - I saw the comedian Pat Paulsen in the gift shop....

Getting off the train in Minneapolis, I took a taxi-cab to the address in Minnetonka, and, riding out there, the taxi driver spoke to me and said, "Why do you work all the way out here? - You could have a nice job in the city!"'

(It was as if he was reading my mind.  I liked the little kids so much, but was completely put off by the parents.  I would have liked to be doing something else - somewhere else....)

        On the radio, that summer, the song "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" would come on, and with those opening notes, I knew - OK, something good is here at least for a few minutes...

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