I Got A Bottle

File under, "Kids These Days"...and remind me to share the MySpace Babysitter story another time.

So we're down at the beach in Bay Head, New Jersey, and looking ahead to the month of August, when we will leave behind our full-time nanny in the Roxiticus Valley and Rex and I will attempt to work from the office in our beach house with a little help from teenage babysitters. I made cell phone contact with a nice young rising high school junior, we'll call her Ratatouille, whom my girls have enjoyed tremendously as a babysitter. Ratatoille agrees to help out in August, and I plan to send her a schedule when we'll need her babysitting services. With a smile, I tell Rex how mature and self-assured she seemed compared with some teenagers who never seem to look you in the eye.

Later that night, as we're headed out to a BYOB dinner, I get the following text from Ratatouille: "I got a bottle."

While I eventually decided to ignore Ratatouille's text in the interest of having a babysitter in August, my first inclination was to text back, "So do I, but it's running low...why don't you bring yours over to my porch?"

When I was a teenager, I certainly did my share of underage drinking...my friends and I just didn't have the advantages of technology to betray us.