I was a teenage babysitter (or was I?)
When I finished school at 16, I got a job at a printing workshop. This sparked a huge row with my mother, who was very aspirational and firmly believed that education was the only way anyone could achieve anything. But despite all the sniping and sneering, she and my step-father soon realised it wasn't all bad; as I worked on the day shift (6am-2pm) I was home before anyone else and was therefore free to do various domestic tasks and collect my younger, far more precocious half-brother and -sister from school and keep them entertained.

This wouldn't have been so bad had I not already been the family's black sheep by default (I was a relic from my mother's previous marriage. My father was a mechanic, my step-father did something executive in an office; the latter mostly thought of me as an inconvenience. Physically, I am a lot like my father - at 16 I was the tallest and the largest by a long way.) Now it seemed that instead of a black sheep, I had been "reformed" into an oversized, averagely-intelligent housekeeper for a family of geniuses. Things were not helped by my mother and step-father taking advantage of this situation and having frequent nights out in the city, then coming back noisy and drunk while everyone else was trying to sleep.

There was another big row when I got transferred to the evening shift (2pm-10pm) and could no longer function as free domestic help - sheer coincidence of course. By this point, I was immune to arguments and didn't care about anything anymore. A couple of months later, I had enough money to move out, did so and never looked back.

So yeah, "cheers" or something.
(WANKERTRON you say "prick", I say "wanker", Sat 30 Oct 2010, 17:01, 1 reply)

So
Did your mum love you or not?
(lemonadegame, Sun 31 Oct 2010, 20:51, closed)