As a Child, What Were Your Chores or Responsibilities?

I was the oldest of eight children.

For a long time I had a notion that my parents adopted me to be a babysitter.  At 10-years-old I was watching my brothers and sisters while my mom left and did errands.  I would never do that to a 10-year-old, but she figured my Aunt Grace (we called close friends and neighbors "Aunt" in those days) lived right next door if there was any trouble.

At 10 years old I could diaper a baby with real diaper pins and wring out the diaper in the toilet.  In fact, when I had my own kids, I vowed I would never put my hand in another toilet with a poopy diaper. You can imagine I was the choice babysitter for everyone in the neighborhood as well.  When I was 13 I was getting babysitting jobs over 16-year-olds because of all my experience with babies.  At least I got paid for watching those kids...

I had to dust and vacuum and keep my room neat (hardly ever accomplished).  My mother must have had a thousand knickknacks and bric-a-brac and she wouldn't just let me dust around them.  I had to take them off the tables and hutches and dust the shelves and then dust the knickknacks, too. 

She had a ceramic rooster collection.  I will never have a rooster collection!!  I hated those roosters, especially the fighting cocks.  What were they thinking?!

On Saturdays I had to clean the bathroom.  OK...I had five brothers!  Can you imagine what the bathroom looked like after a week?  And we had these tiny pink tiles on the floor and bigger pink tiles on the walls.  Tile is impossible to keep clean in a bathroom full of grout.  Yuk!  It's the reason I slept late on Saturdays, or tried to.

I mainly had to take care of whatever baby was drinking a bottle or needed to be fed in a high chair.  I realized, when I left home, I didn't know how to cook (except peel potatoes, which I also vowed I would never do again--and never have!) because I always fed the babies while my mother cooked.

If I could, I would sneak out the door quietly, but if ever my mother caught me sitting and reading a book, she would yell at me to do something helpful/useful!

I figured out at an early age that my mother would never disturb anyone in the bathroom.  You guessed it.  I did most of my reading in the bathroom.

Still do!