The World Isn’t Safe for Pet-Sitting Clubs.
Alan ten-Hoeve
The only people we’ve been around since the lockdown started are my in-laws. It’s relatively safe. Their COVID tests have been negative and they’ve kept the same home-bound existence as us for the past several months. Even so, we’re always outdoors and keep a distance from each other with our masks handy. The kids can’t hug their grandparents but are happy to see them. Happy to see anyone who isn’t Mom and Dad.
On a recent visit to their back patio, Pop-pop, a well-organized packrat, hauls out a box of electronics from the basement for the kids to rummage through. Our twelve-year-old son grabs a malfunctioning drone to tinker with while our seven-year-old daughter finds her mom’s old room phone— one of those clear plastic see-through telephones from the early-nineties. The kind where you can see all the electronics and circuits inside and that lights up when a call comes in. The girls on The Baby-Sitters Club TV show use one to take job calls, so she, my daughter, loves it immediately. Says she wants to use it to start a pet-sitting business with her friends. I open my mouth to say something like, that just isn’t possible right now, but stop myself. I let her have her fantasy. We need them sometimes just to get through.
Back at home, her mom plugs it into the landline jack. Gives her a demonstration on how an old phone works. It is a lot harder to convey things than you would expect. Like how, unlike cells, the telephone doesn’t have its own unique number. Or how the dial tone works, and the time limit one has to punch in the phone number before the off-hook tone blares at you. Also, how to end a call. When our twelve-year-old sees you have to put the handset back in the cradle, he holds his head like it’s going to explode and says, “So that’s why it’s called ‘Hanging up!’ Mind is blown.”
For now, our daughter just uses the see-through telephone to call Mom and Dad’s cells for fun. But she is so excited to start a pet-sitting business that it breaks my heart. When she talks about it her eyes light up. She’s even prepared a little kit, a My Little Pony tin lunch box where she keeps supplies like extra collars, toys, catnip, and treats. I feel a responsibility to level with her, to tell her the reality of things. That the world just isn’t safe for pet-sitting clubs and friends. But I keep my mouth shut. I don’t burst her bubble. Not today.
Alan ten-Hoeve is a writer and musician living in New England with his wife and kids. His words have recently appeared in The Daily Drunk and his music can be found on Mint 400 Records. His twitter is @alantenhoeve