You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny by Suzanne Hansen

years younger than me, but Mom had blithely promised my services to our Avon lady. She needed someone to watch her four children, ages one to seven, for an evening because she had an important date. I wondered who she was dating. And who was the father to the four she already had? But my mother had said I wasn’t supposed to criticize people unless I’d walked a mile in their shoes, a concept she had explained to me more than once.
    When I arrived, the Avon lady informed me that there had been recent reports of a prowler in the area and that I should call the police if anything suspicious happened. I turned on every light in the house and spent the entire night peeping out from behind the curtains. How could anyone let me, a nine-year-old who still played with Barbies and was scared of the witch in
The Wizard of
Oz, take care of her children in the face of such imminent danger? I wanted to call my mom. But the prospect of a paying job convinced me to tough it out.
    At NNI I could now see that my very first adventure in babysitting had truly been an early indication of things to come. My talent as a busybody, my propensity to psychoanalyze people and their relationships, my alternating confidence and self-doubt, and my willingness to face the unknown, be it possible prowlers or shady strip malls. I was ready. Bring on the kids!
    But there was more school. We were taught the definition of a nanny, to wit: “A nanny’s role is to provide support to the family by serving as a loving, nurturing, and trustworthy companion to the children. A nanny has special childcare skills and a deep love for and understanding of children. A nanny offers the family convenient, high-quality care to meet each child’s physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs.”
    Our teachers urged us to remember that a nanny isn’t a maid or a cook. Carolyn and Linda were experienced enough to know that therewould indeed be families that were looking for a nanny to perform housework, such as doing laundry, washing dishes, or making dinner. They told of one family that even required their nanny to shovel snow from their Chicago sidewalk each morning; apparently the dad had a bad back. I learned that a lot of nannies were taken advantage of. But I thought I had the perfect plan. I would work for a family that had a maid and a cook, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about scrubbing the floor and whipping up dinner. Why were all these other girls such pushovers? That wasn’t going to be me.
    Carolyn laid out a few more basic rules:
     
Don’t wear suggestive clothing.
When you’re out to dinner with the family, don’t order the most expensive item on the menu.
Maintain a professional decorum. Don’t make your employers your friends.
Do not be the wife’s confidante about her troubles with her husband.
     
    Or, in some instances,
     
Don’t be the mistress’s confidante.
     
    (And of course)
     
Don’t become the mistress.
     
    (Was this rule really necessary? Wasn’t it just assumed that you shouldn’t sleep with your boss? Had this actually been a problem in the past?)
    And right there on the board in big letters was written the cardinal rule, staring us in the face every day and stated and restated as often as possible:
     
Get a signed contract detailing pay, hours, and rate for overtime, and any other expectations before agreeing to the position.
     
    Another student named Mandie and I became close friends. She was only two years older than me, and she had silky black shoulder-lengthhair and a warm smile that made her approachable. I grew very fond of her. It might have been my mothering instinct that drew me to her—I felt the urge to take her under my wing. She seemed so alone, having driven all the way from Montana by herself. Her father, a lawyer and a man of few words himself, had given her only one piece of advice as she started her journey: “Count to ten before you speak.” I didn’t know it at the time, but soon Mandie