In order to go out for dinner somewhere that you order off a menu (that isn't posted on a wall), sometimes parents have to hire a babysitter. This means that going out for dinner will cost twice as much, so we need to find a place that serves food that tastes twice as good. Not always an easy task.

When my older boys were young, we had a series of babysitter boo-boos that really curtailed our social life for quite some time.

The first one was Stacey. My husband used to call her "Spacey" because she kind of had that look permanently etched on her faced that said "Huh?" Spacey had a predilection to use our phone to call 900 numbers; the ones that cost money to use. Of course, I didn't know this until my phone bill came. Lo and behold, $150 worth of 900 numbers were listed on the bill. Obviously, we didn't ask her to do that again.

Liz was a pretty girl who loved kids. The kids liked her too. One evening she apparently sent them to bed early and my kids complained about it the next morning. I asked them why she'd sent them to bed.

They said, "Because her boyfriend didn't like us."

"Her boyfriend was here?"

"Yeah, and he's mean."

This probably wasn't the only time that a boy had ruined a perfectly good babysitter...but...bye, bye, Liz.

The next girl babysat for us only once. This was fifteen years ago, so you'll forgive me if I don't remember her name. For the last fifteen years, we've simply referred to her as The Girl Who Stole $500 From My Dresser Drawer.  Enough said.

The last one was a young man named Brian. He was firm with my boys because sometimes you had to be. It's possible, though, that he may have been a little too firm and a little less vigilant than he should have been.

When we came home, we noticed that a screen had fallen out of one of the windows and was lying on the ground outside. We asked Brian what happened and he said he didn't know. The next morning, I asked the boys. What they said chilled me to the very bones: "We crawled through the window and ran away from home last night." Apparently, they only came back because they weren't allowed to cross the street without an adult. That was the last time we ever hired a babysitter that wasn't a family member. It was also the day our monthly "date nights" came to an abrupt halt.

Shortly after my oldest child turned thirteen, I gave birth to my third child. I thought it would be alright to leave the first two at home while I took the baby to a doctor's appointment. When I came back, I found that the oldest had muscled his younger brother into the baby's car seat, buckled it, and poured ice cubes down his back.

Fast forward twelve years. The baby will turn twelve this year. He has two younger siblings. Getting his older brothers to babysit takes an act of God.

My husband asked me, "So, when will it be safe for us to go out without hiring a babysitter?"

I considered his question carefully. Let's see. The almost twelve-year old is even more unpredictable than the first child was. He's smart as a whip, though, and he's fearless, too. So I know that if someone was choking to death, he'd not only know the Heimlich Maneuver, but he'd also know what a tracheotomy was and he wouldn't be afraid to try it if need be. The problem is that he might not necessarily do them in that order and he can't be reliably depended on to be sure the victim was actually choking first.

Yesterday, I came around the corner of my kitchen to see my six-year old sitting in a laundry basket at the top of the stairs where my "potential babysitter" was getting ready to give him a push.

My daughter, the voice of reason yelled, "You're going to push him down the stairs?! You're mean!"

His giggling ended abruptly when he saw me glaring at him. Only then did rationality come back to him as he helped the younger boy out of the basket.

In answer to my husband's query: "Well, honey, by the time he's old enough to babysit, we won't need a babysitter anymore."