I know, I know–this blog is basically turning into “Greer Bitches About How Dumb Mysteries Are” dot com. BUT THEY REALLY ARE DUMB.

Today I read Dawn and the Disappearing Dogs. The premise is that one of the wealthiest men in Stoneybrook is no longer so wealthy, so he’s taken to stealing purebred dogs to maintain his lavish lifestyle. This is dumb for many reasons:

One of the major themes of the series is thirteen as a turning point, the age where one is Grown Up. You can baby-sit at night. You can go steady. You don’t ask your parents for help in 95% of the cases where you really, really should. Mallory and Jessi see thirteen as the magic age where they will get sparkly sweatshirts, contacts, and nose jobs. Shannon Kilbourne even titles the essay that frames her portion of the The Baby-Sitters Remember “Thirteen,” which is a sort-of coming of age story.

Apart from the whole “no sitting at night” thing, Mallory and Jessi actually have a fair amount of autonomy for eleven year olds, especially by today’s Helicopter Parents standard. How many eleven year olds do you know, for instance, who go to New York City to visit a boyfriend? How many eleven year olds are allowed to spend a weekend baby-sitting their siblings? (Sorry, Jessi, but I have to agree with Aunt Cecelia on that one. That’s just plain illegal.)

So one would assume that, despite all the whining from Mal and Jessi, that being eleven in Stoneybrook doesn’t really suck that much. Parents are more than lenient. Despite the fact that the Pikes have nixed the nose job idea, Mallory has more independence than would be considered prudent by commentors on parenting blogs, even the “hip” ones. But the same cannot be said for Mallory and Jessi’s peers. It is, in fact, one of the great mysteries of the BSC.

When we are first introduced to their characters, Tiffany Kilbourne is a sitter and Ben Hobart is Mallory’s Australian doppelganger/boyfriend. (Kind of creepy, if you ask me.) Yet somehow, over the course of the series, they are both on the receiving end of maturity downgrades. Rather than being pissed that the BSC has stolen her and Shannon’s sitting “territory,” Tiffany becomes part of the territory and becomes a BSC client. And Ben shows up at events that the BSC are running/involved with, and there is no mention of the fact that Ben and Mallory go out sometimes.

Sometime after December 1994 (Ben and Mallory have a fight about carolling in SS12), Ben and Mal’s relationship fizzles out. Perhaps all of the fighting about carolling and card catalog usage got to him. He shows up at the Greenbrook Club bathing cap contest. He plays an innkeeper in the church Christmas pageant and pisses off Mallory because he adlibs some Faux-stralian flavor into his lines. There is never any mention that hey, at one time, Ben and Mallory might have looked deeply into each other’s glasses and held each other’s sweaty palms. No, all has been forgotten–the scars from those card catalog/carolling fights go too deep. He is excised from Mal’s Chapter Two segments. The first cut is the deepest, indeed.

Ben has a chance to redeem himself after Mal’s Spaz Girl nervous breakdown, however. He is seen saying that he has tried to reach out to Mallory, but she doesn’t seem very receptive. No, Ben, your flames of love died out long ago. It happened while you were decorating your bathing cap to look like a shark attack.

Tiffany Kilbourne never gets a similar shot of redemption. She becomes a client and stays a client. Sometimes, I think, her age is even downgraded to ten. She’s eleven in The Complete Guide, but I swear she’s mentioned as ten in some places. Anyone with a citation, hit me up in the comments.

Then, in Claudia and the Recipe for Danger, we actually have a twelve-year-old pretty much being sat for by the eleven and thirteen-year-old sitters. He is the second Tyler in the Kids Kitchen thing, and no one ever really notes WHY there’s a twelve-year-old there, and he doesn’t do much. But it’s still alarming.

My conclusion is that really, Mal and Jessi seem to be the only eleven-year-olds in Stoneybrook who are afforded such responsibility. Perhaps if Ben had been smart like Logan (never thought I’d type the phrase “smart like Logan,” BUT SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME, GHOSTWRITERS?!), and become an associate member, he could have kept his lady and his adult-ish status. It seems like being in the BSC is the ticket to maturity, and will help you avoid all of the potential pitfalls of adolescence, like acne, gum-chewing, trying cigarettes, and hiding those tiny bottles of wine in your flop socks. Look at what happened to Stacey and Dawn once they leave the comforting bosom of the BSC for Bad Girl-ism and California! Would Dawn have gone to a restaurant that served “more than just tea” (AKA HEAD SHOP IN THE BACK, DUDES) if she were still living with Mary Anne? Of course not.

The time warp works in mysterious ways. It can make you age so that you seem ahead of your years (everyone in the BSC). It can make you age backwards (Tiffany and Ben). Stoneybrook, Connecticut. An idyllic suburb of Stamford, a convenient train ride away from New York City straight into the heart of… THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

UPDATE: Not even bodily injury can stop Ashley from sharing her vast BSC knowledge. Thank you, Ashley!:

From #70, Stacey and the Cheerleaders:
Shannon nodded. “She missed the Terrible Twos. Instead she’s having the Terrible Tens. Even her teachers are complaining.” (p.23)
AND
Tiffany is a ten-year-old version of Shannon - physically, at least. (p.60)

But in #112, Kristy and the Sister War, Tiffany is 11 again, though she is still getting sat for.

One of the indicators that The Powers That Be at Scholastic were sometimes a little lazy in regard to the BSC books is the amazing coincidence of so many of the sitters’ parents being named “John” in some form. We have John Kishi, John Philip Ramsey (who has a brother named just plain John, apparently, according to BSC in the USA), Jonathan Pike (who was also sometimes called “John”), Jonathan Stevenson, and Jack Schafer.

Now, you’d think this would be easy enough to remember while writing about the BSC. Just remember that Stacey’s dad is Ed, Kristy’s bio dad is Patrick and her stepdad is Watson, Logan’s dad is Lyman, and Mary Anne’s dad is Richard. Then you can feel confident calling every other dad with a child in the Club “John.”

Except that Nola Thacker misread the memo. Here is a quote from Dawn and Whitney, Friends Forever:

Barbara looked downright disapproving as she walked up to the table and sat down. But all she said was, “What an interesting place, Richard,” in a cool, polite voice that said, NOT.

What, exactly, is Richard Spier doing on a family fun date with Dawn, Jeff, and some woman named Barbara??

Writing this entry took a lot longer than I planned. It was hard, very hard, to form a cohesive statement on Dawn Schafer’s positive points. This was actually surprising to me, since Dawn did have a run as my favorite BSC character. I decided that instead of trying to make a cohesive, essay-type entry, a list would suffice.

Why I kind of like Dawn sometimes:

Many people believe that Dawn got extremely annoying as the series went on, constantly proselytizing about the environment and never being able to decide which side of the country she wanted to live on. I am torn, as Dawn was one of my favorite characters growing up and although it is hard to bring myself to read Dawn Saves the Planet, I love the California Diaries.

There is an issue with Dawn, however, that as a notoriously picky eater I am unable to ignore. I was reminded of this problem yesterday, while I was rereading BSC in the USA. In this book, the Northern RV meets up with Mary Anne’s grandmother at the Mall of America, where Dawn forces everyone to eat at a health food restaurant. Now, Mary Anne’s grandmother traveled to come meet them. I feel like it should have been HER choice as to where people eat. Dawn can eat from the salad bar or something if she really wants to be picky. I myself am a picky eater, as I mentioned before, and if I’m with a bunch of people who all want to eat at a place that doesn’t have food that I like, I just go to McDonald’s afterward.

I remember Dawn doing this sort of thing a lot, forcing everyone to kowtow to her special eating habits or environmental practices or whatever. Stacey didn’t do this, and girl had a legitimate medical reason for her diet. I think that this is a large part of Dawn’s bad reputation among older fans. She often displays this sort of selfishness. I believe it was largely responsible for her fight with Sunny in the California Diaries series. Sunny was going through the most traumatic event of her life, and Dawn couldn’t be bothered to empathize with her; she just was angry with Sunny for not reacting to it in what Dawn felt was an appropriate manner. Dawn just never seems to be able to think about anybody except Dawn Schafer.

There are several character-memes in the BSC fandom, and one of them is “Stacey is a ho.” I.e., you will find Stacey underneath the bleachers sucking off the basketball team LOL. I have always found these meme to be unfair and distasteful. Yes, as we saw in Stacey and the Boyfriend Trap, Stacey sure has had a lot of boyfriends for an eighth grader. But to be fair, Stace was in eighth grade for a very long time. (Oooh, another fandom meme!) Really, is it so hard to believe that someone who is smart, attractive, and pretty damn nice would be attractive to the opposite sex? And wouldn’t have a hard time finding a boyfriend (or seven)?

SOmeone on the BSC boards, however, pointed out that they didn’t really like the message that it sent that Stacey moved right on from one serious relationship (Robert Brewster) to another (Ethan Carroll). This criticism kind of threw me for a loop, because I’ve done the same thing. I am what a women’s magazine would call a serial monogamist. I don’t have one night stands. I date people for about two years, and enter into a relationship state known as being Brooklyn-married. The longest time since I’ve been seriously dating that I’ve gone without some sort of romantic attachment: two weeks. Shortest: twelve hours. So as you can see, for me Stacey’s serial monogamy that occurs later in the series doesn’t strike me as odd at all, and I never even thought to fret about the messages that Stacey’s boy-attachment sends to young, impressionable readers.

Then, like in Beavis and Butt-head when their very small and ineffectual brains begin working, a dim, small lightbulb appeared above my head. Out of all the BSC members, Stacey is the one whose family situation most resembles my own. My dad has always worked a lot, my parents got divorced, and he found his own Samantha Young while my mother is still single. I can say, easily, that things that are easy for my friends with parents in loving stable relationships (getting over things, breaking up with someone), are very difficult or near impossible for me. I then began to think about some of the other members of the BSC, and their attitudes toward men and relationship.

Mary Anne, Jessi, and Claudia are probably the healthiest. Jessi’s parents seem to have a really great relationship, and Squirt is still a toddler so you know their marriage is still Hot. Jessi is usually pretty level-headed, and she tells Quint where to go when he wants to take their relationship further and more serious than she is comfortable with at age eleven.

As far as Mary Anne goes, well, my hatred for Logan is still strong. Despite her meekness, Mary Anne is able to stand up for herself and dump the dead weight and bossiness to rival Kristy Thomas that is Logan Bruno. Yeah, she takes him back a few books later, after he promises to smother her less, but she finally realizes that Logan is not the guy for her in Mary Anne’s Big Breakup. She knows that she needs to be her own person, and having Logan Bruno around will hinder that. It is easy to criticize Richard Spier for being nerdy and over-protective, but I think that Richard, especially later Richard, is one of the BSC parents who is actually the most tuned-in and active in their kid’s life. It was Richard’s help, after all, that Mary Anne recognized that she needed to dump Logan–for good this time. Even her friends in the BSC blew her off, but Richard recognized that the relationship wasn’t really working for Mary Anne anymore.

Claudia is someone who should be on the same boy-attractiveness plain as Stacey, but she doesn’t even have a boyfriend who’s not a Vacation Boyfriend until Mark Jaffe. Janine dumps her Hottie Boyfriend Jerry and have her pine after her for the rest of the series. Go Janine! The Kishis, like the Ramseys, have a really strong marriage.

On the divorce side, we also have Kristy and Dawn. While many pin Kristy as a lesbian, I don’t think that not caring about clothes and a love for sports automatically defines someone as a lesbian. Kristy manages to keep Bart as her sort-of boyfriend until Kristy + Bart = ?. Bart gets fresh (Peter Lerangis’s memorable makeout scene!), Kristy freaks out. Kristy realizes that she is not ready for that kind of action yet. Some people read this as Kristy will NEVER be ready for this kind of action if a penis is attached, but I think that might not be necessarily true. I think it has far more to do with the fact that her father abandoned her. Kristy: probably should go to therapy now that she has a millionaire stepdad who can afford it.

Finally, we have Dawn. Dawn is one of the more contradictory characters in the BSC, and perhaps in children’s literature as a whole. We are told over and over that Dawn is such an individual, but yet she often changes her California Casual self to satisfy what she perceives as what other people would like. The two most glaring examples of this involve boys: Travis and Lewis. Dawn did everything Travis told her, because she thought that Travis liked her and if she cut her hair and pierced her ears again that he would like her even more. And then she made that kind of psychotic-sounding phone call–”I was already a beauty!” And for Lewis, Dawn did that weird makeover/personality transplant, and then immediately went back to Old Dawn when he revealed that he liked Old Dawn more. Insecurity stemming from the fact that her parents, who for most of her life seemed to be happy and loving, very suddenly got divorced and her family was ripped in half? It’s the only explanation I can come up with that makes sense.

I am sure that there are people with divorced parents who are OK with relationships, and people with happily-married parents who are messed up about them, for various life factors. But it sure does seem to be an explanation for a lot of what goes in BSC lovelife land.

As promised, here are my thoughts on Dawn and the We <3 Kids Club.

Dawn was my favorite member for quite some time. I liked her LOOOOONNNG white blonde hair. Being a platnium blonde myself, I envied her, as my mother didn’t let me grow out my pageboy until fifth grade or so. I also was what my boyfriend calls an “aspiring vegetarian.” And California seemed even more glamorous to me than New York City. Finally, I, too, wanted to be seen as a laid-back individual.

As we all know, Dawn is rarely actually a laid-back individual. This book is indeed one of those times where she defies her chapter 2 characteristics and is anything but laid-back.

This is a Dawn-in-Palo City book. I happen to enjoy reading about Palo City a fair amount. I am a big California Diaries fan. Thus, this is a book I reread fairly frequently. There are so many crazy things in this book, starting with the laid-back lack of school bells! OMG! I went to school on the East Coast and never had bells either, but I digress.

First moment of craziness–the W<3KC gets famous! They are in the newspaper and on TV! Dawn has a laugh like pealing bells! Kristy gets really jealous. Oh, Kristy. Kristy is pretty annoying in this book, so I don't want to focus on this part too much. Basically, despite the fact that the BSC has more business than they can handle, Kristy wants to equal, if not better, the W<3KC media attention.

But the W<3KC can't handle it! They are too disorganized! Dawn steers them in the right direction, starting with an appointment book for the CORRECT YEAR.

In this book we also get to spend more time with Carol Olson. Dawn’s newfound respect for Carol from California Girls! flies out the window when Jack and Carol announce their engagement. Dawn sees it necessary to steal her dad’s credit card, book a flight to Connecticut out of LAX, and rechristen herself “Marisol.” Lo and behold, she is not welcomed with open arms in Stoneybrook. Dawn=delusional. Mary Anne=rocking an LL Bean nightgown.

If I had done this at thirteen I would have been in such deep shit. If I did this at 22 I would still be in deep shit. All Dawn has to do is work back the cost of the plane ticket–a nice large sum, to be sure, but still.

Dawn’s punishment, however, is not mentioned in any subsequent book. It’s possible she worked it off fast, what with all the extra baby-sitting jobs the W<3KC got after their media blitz, but still.

Dawn’s actions also cause Jack and Carol to break off their engagement. Poor Carol. I would feel so bad if my future stepdaughter flew across the country to get away from me.

But don’t worry, she always pulls herself up to the top of heap. I still don’t really understand what that means. Jeff doesn’t either.

So yeah, this book pretty much encourages children to steal from their parents if they don’t like their future stepparents. After all, the punishment won’t carry over into the next book and you’ll totally get what you want: a break up! Yay!

For next time: Mallory Pike, #1 Fan.

Usually, despite the fact that they are books intended for children, the BSC do not really set good examples. While they are kind toward old ladies and all that other do-gooder crap that makes me kind of nauseous when I read them, they do a lot of really stupid things. Like not tell their parents when they’re being stalked by a maniac, or thinking that it’s fine to go through life spelling like a first grader, or that having, like, seven boyfriends before you graduate from the eighth grade is totally normal.

Everyone once in a while, there is something in the books that just really rings true and runs through my head when I’m dealing with that situation. While I try to keep my personal life separate from this site as much as possible, I want to share this quote because seriously, I think about it all the time. Maybe even in daily.

From Dawn on the Coast:

It’d be nice if Mom were here, I found myself thinking. If she were a part of things, playing cards with me, puttering around the patio. And wouldn’t it be great if the doorbell rang and it was Mary Anne, just dropping by for a visit. What I wanted was to be able to share all the things I loved with all the people I loved. I imagined Nicky Pike out here holing up in a new, California hiding place. Maybe in the crawl space between the bushes. Maybe in the cave down by the creek.

While perhaps I don’t need my mom around all the time–visiting distance is fine–and there are no baby-sitting charges for me to weirdly pine after, well, I think that in these days where hardly anyone stays in the town in which they grew up and your best friend in third grade probably moved away in fourth, this quote is something that makes Dawn, and her bicoastal craziness, more understandable and easy to relate to as a character. There are so many people I want around me, experiencing things with me, and they’re so far away that I need to think really really hard about when I can call them, or spend thousands of dollars on plane tickets and visas to go visit them. And it’s rough, dude. I understand Dawn’s Big Moves so well now. Sometimes I can even justify that thing where she steals her dad’s credit card and stuff, but homegirl had some BALLS committing a crime!

So yeah. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.