Hmmm... as the only American adolescent in Abidjan who wasn't sent away to anglophone boarding school, I was not only pretty much the only babysitter, I was also (when needed) the Easter Bunny, Santa's Elf, and, every weekend, the ticket-seller to the Embassy movies.

The Embassy also hired teens during the summer; I was the warehouse receptionist, I typed up a book on anthropology of local tribal women, which involved not only stencils and mimeographs but running around a table collating; this was before smart copiers. And one summer, when they had nothing for me to do, the secretary for the Japanese ambassador, who worked mostly in French. I got to where I could send and receive telexes in the Japanese syllabary without understanding a word of it.

I also painted a house one summer in college, in a failed attempt to learn to like beer.

Lessee, here, I worked in a mouse lab one summer, and I was terrible at sexing the newborns so they kept having unauthorized babies... oops. Oh, and while I was in grad school I tutored the football team, including such stars as Terry Kirby and Herman Moore.

Interesting to see what weve all been up to!