I babysat my siblings sometimes while my mother was on dates. (Would I hire a 13 year old to sit my kids now? Haven't yet, but when I was 13 I babysat all the time, including infants!) Also, joint custody, you get free weekends & we spent summers with my father.

I want to know the stories of Gud's conception and Kathy's mother's near-death!

When my mom was my age she was dealing with a 2 year old (me), a 10 year old (my sister), and a new, not entirely constructed house. Before that she'd dealt with a bedridden and alcoholic father, mission school teaching in Central America, graduate school, and working her way through her undergrad as the person who refills those sanitary supply dispensers in her college's women's bathrooms. She may have found just dealing with two kids and the end stages of house construction rather restful at that point.

6mg of dilaudid and 50 of benadryl and I slept maybe a couple hours last night. What a useless constitution.

I don't like to think on what my parents may have done by the time they were my age. Because I've done damn shit, and am jobless to boot.

My story is unremarkable. Inadequate precautions were made and then a marriage that was likely to happen anyway was fast tracked to beat my appearance. Worked out for my parents and it's easy to remember which anniversary it is every year.

Right now it's about the time I have lunch in order to beat people to the lone microwave. I haven't had anything to eat for the last 15 hours. Yet, I am not hungry, that is sort of odd.

I'm hungry, but not inclined to do anything about it.

Mom had slipped on ice at work and wrenched her shoulder. The doctor gave her an NSAID called Clinoril for the pain. Soon afterward, she came down with what was originally diagnosed as measles and was put in the isolation ward in the hospital in Joliet, but she wasn't getting any better.

A week later, a doctor from Chicago happened to be visiting the hospital, and Mom's doctor asked him to look at my mom. He recognized her symptoms as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, which was a severe allergic reaction to the medication, and had her transferred to Rush-St. Luke's in the city immediately. SJS was so rare at the time that this doc was an expert in it even though he'd only seen 25 cases in his career.

She was in Chicago for over two months, lost all of her hair, most of her skin, had a temp of 105+ for more than five days, nearly lost her vision but still ended up with permanently dried out eyes (she has to use drops and ointment for the rest of her life), and has scars over her body from the skin loss.

I was only 12 when she got sick, and my dad and older sibs did their best to protect me from how sick she really was. They took me up to Chicago to see her once early on, and it wasn't until a few years later that I realized it was to say goodbye to her since they didn't think she was going to last through the night.

I'm hungry, but not inclined to do anything about it.

That's the apathy diet, I'd like to go on it but I just can't work up the enthusiasm.

Would I hire a 13 year old to sit my kids now? Haven't yet, but when I was 13 I babysat all the time, including infants!

I started babysitting when I was 12--my first job was the neighbors' six-month-old daughter. By the time I was 13, I was in demand on the block, and I continued to babysit throughout high school. Actually, the year I was 13, I had a regular gig every Saturday for the local librarian; she and her hub were big partiers and went out every week.

Oh, man. Now I want to reach back in time and cuddle 12-year-old Kathy.

Not nearly as much as I want to reach back in time and meet Hec's mom and see her meet Emmett and Matilda.