[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 5: The Hardest Nos]

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 05:21:10PM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> Homework: please share your best horror or success stories at dealing with 
> loved ones who want things from you.

I learned a lesson from one of my favourite movies, "Labyrinth".  In it,
the teenage heroine is taken for granted by her father and stepmother,
and is always asked to babysit her baby half-brother.  The stepmother
justifies her actions by saying that she wouldn't ask if Heroine had
something else to do, like a date (insert worried encouragement that
she'd really like it if Heroine went on dates), but as she obviously had
nothing to do, she shouldn't begrudge helping.

Okay, so this was just a movie, but it made me realize that I could
easily be taken for granted by my brother and roped in to babysit nieces
and nephews in exactly the same way, "because I didn't have anything to
do", because I, like the Heroine in the movie, am not really interested
in going out a lot, and having a quiet, restful night at home could be
counted by some as "not having anything to do".

So I made it clear to my brother that I was perfectly happy to be a
backup emergency babysitter, but I didn't want to be first on the list
of babysitters.  That worked out well; I got called on once or twice,
I was glad to help on those rare occassions, he was glad to get my help,
and everyone was happy.

Now my nieces and nephews are old enough so that the elder ones can
babysit the younger ones, so the need isn't there any more.

Kathryn Andersen
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