Nanny Palooza

As I watched Rosalie sprawled face down on the shag rug pounding her feet on the floor screaming, “PAAAAPAAAA! PAPAAAAA!!!!!” whilst trying to put her pacifier (she’s three), her thumb and her favorite stuffed animal into her mouth I calmly turned the pages of the September issue of Elle and chanted under my breath “I have a college education, I have a college education…”

I am a musician. But right now you can call me “Mary (insert derogative and inappropriate word here) Poppins”. Nearly 5 years of college education, two diplomas (Cello and Vocal performance…ring-a-ding-ding) and an ungodly amount of student loans to pay back, my current profession is Nanny-Extraordinaire.

Let me explain. When I moved to Paris in pursuit of love and music I knew that I was going to have to get a job to support my hopefully budding career and my love of shoes...having just left my lovely sandwich-making job during my three month stint of living at home with my parents (anyone wondering as to my transcontinental move?) it was a given that I would find a part-time job once in Paris.

As afore-mentioned, I am a musician. My first contract in Paris was singing in the choir for the New European Philharmonic Orchestra for their tour of the Mozart Requiem. Pretty nifty. I was supposed to receive around 500EUR for five concerts. Of course when it came time to pay-up (after over 40 hours of rehearsal/concerts/travel) the group conveniently went bankrupt and I never saw one centime.

Long-story short, while I continued to look for other ways to get conned, I was hired to teach English to two very spoiled French girls. When I got hired along with several other young starving artists I told myself that I can do anything for a year, and ‘hey, at least it’s better than making sandwiches…’

But let’s just call this what it is. I am yet another parent substitute for two children whose parents work more than full-time and want to have a life of their own. Not only am I responsible for teaching them English through song, dance and puppetry, but I also have the happy task of teaching them manners, personal cleanliness and respect.

Amongst my many grievances (many of them poop-related) is the sentiment that I am ‘just-the-help’. No better than the Tunisian woman who comes and cleans for them. I have enormous responsibilities for these children, and yet when I encounter a parent of one of their little friends I must keep my distance, and at the park there is a complete division of the nannies. There is a bench for all the ethnic nannies, the mommies-wearing-Prada-and-reading-vogue, the young students, and of course the-I’m-a-someday-soon-gonna-make-it-musician-artist-actress-just-doing-this-to-make-my-rent-nannies.

Regardless of the division of the park benches…starving artists make the best babysitters. We are all the a-typical extroverted, can sing, can dance, can make-believe better than the nowadays over-technologized kids, and am able to cross the street and look both ways (most of the time ahem.). So right now, even if my hands are covered in snot and other little-girl excrements I can always work toward the day that my name will be up in lights.