Claudia, Mary Ann, Kristy, Stacey and Dawn had it together. When they baby-sat, they had the kid kit. They also had others in the Baby-Sitters Club to help them out in case one, say, broke her toe playing hide-and-seek upstairs or got conked on the head by the basketball backboard when she lowered it so Anthony could work on his dunk.

The rest of us had to deal with baby-sitting solo – without that network of friends who could rescue a gal.

The “Baby-Sitters Club” book series, created by Ann M. Martin, lined the shelves of many a then-teenage girl.

This summer, the books are being reissued – complete with a new book in the series, the prequel “The Summer Before.” August marks the 24th anniversary of the series, which all started with “Kristy’s Great Idea.”

July also marks the 23rd anniversary of the film “Adventures in Babysitting.”

Summer is prime time for baby-sitting duties. Some local residents shared their stories from their younger days of kid-watching.

Some responses were edited for length, grammar or clarity.

Brent Minnick, 35, Fort Wayne

I am 35 years old, yet I still remember it vividly, as if it were yesterday.

I was 13 years old, baby-sitting for my four cousins: a girl and her three brothers, ages 8, 6, 4 and 2. The middle boy was by far the most wild of the children. Previous incidents included him locking me out of the house, running over my foot then rolling their four-wheeler ATV and unlocking his father’s gun cabinet, wielding a rifle.

On this particular day in early January, it was freezing cold outside, and Mitch decided to go play on the sheet of ice in the above-ground pool. He was as quick as a hiccough, and every attempt to reach him from the deck failed. As my frustration mounted, I walked on the ice to get him only to hear a loud POP, CRACK! The ice broke beneath me. I fell in the freezing water and under the ice. It turned out the ice could hold a 40-pound boy but not a 140-pound one. The children roared with laughter as I got out, soaked through and shivering. When the father was informed of the day’s mishap, he simply rolled his eyes and asked only if I’d torn the pool liner.

Susan Groeling, 41, Fort Wayne

Back in the early ’80s, when I first began to baby-sit, my pastor’s wife asked me to keep her two boys for a few hours while she ran some errands. The oldest was about 6 and the younger one was maybe 3.

She had been gone only a few minutes when I asked the boys if they wanted to see my new glow-in-the-dark watch. We all piled into their small bedroom walk-in closet and pulled the door closed behind us. We attempted to open the door, and the older one smacked his head and moaned, “I forgot to tell you that the door doesn’t open from the inside!”

Yikes.

We pulled, banged and shouted in case the mother was still somewhere in the house, and we tried to pry it open. No such luck. I tried to keep the boys calm, yet the younger one cried as I reassured him we would be fine. I was pretty much a kid myself, too, and I was inwardly panicking. What if we had an emergency? What if the house caught on fire while we were trapped in the closet?

Most of all, I was afraid I’d become some kind of sermon illustration on the next Sunday. Fortunately, we had access to the overhead light and plenty of toys to play with. It didn’t take long, however, for the three of us to discover we all had to go to the bathroom. I remember tossing around the idea of using a bucket if we couldn’t wait any longer. Of course, I had my infamous watch to monitor the time, so we could judge when the mother would be returning and we could start banging on the door again.

Two hours later she came home and could hear us upstairs but thought we were just playing, so she didn’t rush upstairs. When she let us out, we about fell out of the door and ran for the bathrooms. Bravely, I put on a good face and attitude, but inside I was embarrassed that I had allowed such an event and risked putting us in danger. It took awhile for me to face that family again, and, no, the pastor never mentioned it in church. When I occasionally see these now-grown men, we all laugh about our adventure. I am a mother of five now and can proudly say that I’ve yet to lock us all in the closet.

However, I no longer purchase glow-in-the-dark watches.

Anson Shupe, 62, Fort Wayne

In 1965, when I was a junior in high school at Mount Lebanon, Pa. (a suburb of Pittsburgh), there was a rash of break-ins by a burglar who left an unusual calling card: He (or she?) deposited a bowel movement in either a bedroom closet or on the living room floor some time after the break-in, and once while a woman was home.

To my knowledge the burglar was never caught, but for one winter I, a teenage male, was in high demand as a baby sitter, particularly for families with small children.

At the time I had a brown belt in judo, James Bond was the cool, in hero and parents must have figured I was better insurance as a deterrent than some mousy co-ed. Word spread within our subdivision, and there were actually bids and counter-bids for my presence on busy Saturday nights. It beat snow-shoveling for pocket money, and the miscreant with the loose bowels never appeared on my watch and appeared to quit the calling-card break-ins.

jyouhana@jg.net