The Manny

No doubt by now you've heard all about The Manny. The book ,the video, the author. As typical with things like this, it becomes a comment passed at a dinner party or an idea passed at a business meeting and before you know it, there's a book, a video, a NYTimes article , a mention in Talk of the Town. I haven't read the book although, I do plan to when it comes out in papaerback (more on this later). This concept, however, harkened me back to my own youth. As a child growing up in Connecticut, we had a slew of babysitters. Typically high school girls, whom at the time I thought were in their 30s, who would spend Saturday nights watching over me & my younger brother. We watched movies, ate Cool Ranch Doritos (my mother's attempt to assuage separation anxiety) and played stupid games. Sometimes we would do "girl things" like paint our toenails (there was the nail polish incident on my bright pink rug) or make an egg & oatmeal face mask. I know my brother abhored these moments and usually retreated to the den with the Atari joystick. Then Evan showed up. He was the high school aged son of my mother's friend. He was dark haired, handsome (in a 50s kind of way), a member of the Varsity swim team and he was not into painting nails or face masks. But, boy did he & my brother have a great time. They high-fived over a high score in Pac Man, double-overed in laughter at Goonies and Evan even managed to figure out how David's Capsela worked and got moving in the bathtub. Now, I've always thought my mother was ahead of her time. But all this recent talk about The Manny really made me think she might have been the originator of The Manny. Nice work, Mom.