Or make a bundle being a baby sitter for someone who is?

Forget it.

Baby sitters around the nation may be finding New Year’s Eve 2000 the best of times. In New York, rates are $250 for five hours and in Memphis, Tenn., $350 for a longer evening. But in most places, including Salisbury, baby sitters just don’t exist.

As of this morning, Scott Maddox, one of the officers of Rowan Baseball Inc., sponsor of a party for 250 at Catawba College’s Crystal Lounge, figures he and his wife will probably be home with the kids.

The Country Club of Salisbury has added baby-sitting to its New Year’s Eve offerings because so many were having problems finding baby sitters. For the first time, says manager Steve Karamichael, they’re booked up. As of early this morning, they had space for exactly four more people.

The Holiday Inn has filled about half of its potential 400 slots without offering baby-sitting.

And for private parties?

If you haven’t already been lucky enough to book your sitter, you probably won’t be lucky now. Baby sitters don’t know any sitters who are baby-sitting hereabouts that night.

“We’ve had a hard time finding a baby sitter,” Maddox says. He and his wife went through their usual routine. “We tried through our little network and talking to other adults. They’ve had a hard time, too. We have some friends who have baby sitters, and we’ve heard people say rates are higher now than they been in the past. But sitters are already booked or they have plans of their own, this being such a special New Year’s.”

Neither Emily Cook nor Melissa Lassiter, both seniors at Salisbury High School who baby-sit, can name anybody who is baby-sitting. And they’ve had numerous calls.

“All the people I know are busy or out of town on New Year’s,” Lassiter says.

Karamichael said Country Club members who wanted to attend the party for 250 there couldn’t find sitters, which prompted his decision to offer baby-sitting, though he couldn’t get the teen-agers he normally has for sitting at the club on Friday and Saturday nights.

“I finally employed some adults who work in a day-care center, and we’ll probably have about 20 kids. We’re just going to include it in the cost of the evening. It’s $200 a couple, and we’re booked up. It appears people want to stay around here.” But the cost is high, he’s heard. In Atlanta, he’s heard hotels are charging $1,000 a day, “but you have to go for five days.”

At the club, $200 a couple will cover not only food, dancing, fireworks and baby-sitting, but also limousine service.

The Holiday Inn is charging $299 a couple, which includes dinner, parties, champagne and a room, but no baby sitting.

And at least one group in Salisbury is going to have their own group baby sitting.

Dan and Ginny Sommers will be host to their Genesis Sunday School Class at First United Methodist Church and members will bring their children.

They planned the party some time ago.

“Basically it’s composed of people who have children,” Ginny Sommers says, and most of the members are newcomers to Salisbury and have no family here, “so it’s nice to have each other.”

About 30 will attend and the party will involve food and games, probably a 2000 edition of Trivial Pursuit, she says, and it will last until about 10 or 10:30 when the baby-sitters will be through for the evening.

And what are all those teen-agers who aren’t baby-sitting planning to do?

Nobody really knows.

Staying home with mom and dad, perhaps, so they’ll be able to tell their children that when they were young and the clock struck 12 they were sitting in front of an old-fashioned television set with Mom and Dad watching a big ball drop at Times Square.