Some Jews Tried to Steal Me

The first baby sitter I had in Chicago was a Jewish woman who had two older daughters and a son who was attending medical school. My mother and the baby sitter clashed repeatedly over issues with regard to the proper values I should be taught. My mother had decided that I should be either a Lutheran minister or some sort of artist. These choices bothered the Jewish woman and I assume her husband as well. She told my mother that I should plan on having a man's job when I got older, like a doctor or a lawyer. She thought my mothers choices were strange and unreasonable.

During the day occasionally Mrs. Denemberg would bring up the debate. Mom had programmed me to keep insisting I was going to be a sculptor, which I usually misspronounced as sculpture.

A typical day would be arriving in the morning and parking in front of the television to watch hours of situation comedies until lunch.

After lunch she would tell me to amuse myself away from the televison so she could watch soap operas. There was a stack of her daughter's Archie comics in a bookshelf beside a chair. I usually laid behind the chair and looked at the comic books. I also found a stack of Playboy.

After I had been in the home for a few years and had been taught a few things one day my mother was late coming home and the daughters decided to take me in their room and watch television with me. I was five.

The first thing they wanted to watch was "The Monkees." During which they started playing a game with me where I was supposed to tell them which Monkee I was while they kept making suggestions and listing the telling details about the character.

They did the same thing when "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." came on but there were only two of them.

Then they wanted to give me a hug and the older girl went first but when the second one happened I took a hold of her so hard that they became alarmed that I would not let go. They had to pry me off of her. The conclusion of this was a discussion with my mother about there being something wrong with me emotionally and a suggestion that I would be better off with them as my family. This resulted in my mother moving me to a different baby sitter and causing me to feel a tremendous loss.