Many years ago I was working in a very foreign city, staying at a very nice hotel. A colleague was staying there too when his wife and little daughter came to visit.
The daughter was a cute little dickens. I had been away from home for a considerable period of time in a dangerous place. And I was missing my two little boys quite a bit. I offered to stay with the little girl one night while the parents had a rare evening out together.
I had a great time. And judging by the giggles, I think she did, too. On the parents' return, she gave them a good report card on me and was very excited to inform them that she had, that same evening, consumed her very first-ever Coca-Cola.
Judging by the instant look the mother shared with me, that was not an approved beverage for her little one. There was no violence at the time. And I have since been informed that same little girl is now a vice president of news somewhere with two of her own children. So, I'm thinking the incident left no lasting damage.
I don't know how my parents picked my babysitters. I remember every one of them. They were well-known to our family and almost finished with high school. I followed the same pattern when entrusting my youngsters to the brief care of others.
It seems that some people — maybe quite a few of them — have a quite different view of temporary caretakers for their youngsters. They seem to take babysitting much more casually than I have.
So imagine my dismay to read the recent post by Nick Arama, my RedState colleague, about the announced intent of New York City's new communist mayor to offer babysitting services to New Yorkers. They could drop their child off at a government building, and some city employee they had never met would take custody of the kid for some hours. And no charge.
So, I waited for the program to launch in the nation's largest city, examined the results, and shared some pointed thoughts on the event.
You can hear this brief audio commentary by clicking on the flag here:
This week, I posted another in the ongoing series of Malcolm's Memories. This one was on how my family adjusted and usually enjoyed the very different way of life in Japan:
Store bargain basements are on the roof. The emergency phone number was 119. On Valentine’s Day, women give the gifts. Taxi drivers protested increasing fares.
Papers get stapled in the upper-right corner. Women apply lipstick to the bottom lip first. Romantic moments are not moonlit; they come with the rising sun.
After punching item prices into a cash register, a local storekeeper routinely pulled out a weathered abacus to check the machine's total.
The most recent audio commentary examined the new and highly energized drive by socialists to seize control of the Democrat Party, the nation's oldest. They have won numerous party primary victories this year, and many of them are expected to join the squad in Congress after the November elections.
It's one thing to influence one of our two major political parties. It's quite another simply to take it over and use the same communist policy agenda that New York City's Muslim mayor is already employing there.
