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.

While it is never mentioned in the books, it follows that due to its Stamford mailing address that Stoneybrook is located in the county of Fairfield, Connecticut. Fairfield, according to its wiki entry, is often a contender for the richest county in America. Fairfield includes Darien, Greenwich, et cetera. The part along the Long Island Sound is called “The Gold Coast.” If you look at the facebook groups for it you will throw up a little bit in your mouth. Questions such as “What car did you get for your sixteenth birthday?” is answered with “Duh, lambourghini!” I am not joking. So this explains why, even though Claudia’s dad was an investment banker and everyone else’s was a lawyer, only Watson was considered rich.

Some odd things: Why does Stoneybrook have a Stamford mailing address? You’d think a town with so many schools would have its own post office. Then I read about the neighborhood of Stamford named Glenbrook. According to a recent New York Times article (username and password required), residents of Glenbrook don’t see themselves as living in Stamford. They see themselves as living in Glenbrook, a small town. Glenbrook’s not on the water, and Stoneybrook seems slightly larger, but the description of “downtown” Glenbrook sounds an awful lot like downtown Stoneybrook.

Here is a map of Fairfield.:

Stamford is sandwiched between Greenwich and Darien. Adjacent to Glenbrook is Darien, which has a billion schools like Stoneybrook and its own newspaper. Glenbrook is not big enough to have its own newspaper. So does Darien=Stoneybrook? If so, why did the BSC always have to pay for half its vacations? Another odd fact: while obviously in Fairfield, no other town in Fairfield is mentioned except for Bridgeport. There is no Mercer or Lawrenceville in Fairfield. Plus, Stamford is close enough to NYC to be a relatively easy commute, which is what Mrs. Stevenson does. For Stacey’s family though, it required a move when her father was transferred back to NYC. I understand why they moved when he was transferred to Stamford–why pay Manhattan prices when you don’t have to?–but why uproot Stacey when you just hop on the Metro-North? Plus, why does the BSC spend two weeks in NYC and act like it’s such a big deal when geographically, it’s just not? And yet Mal says that her family calls NYC “the city.”

Ahh, inconsistencies!

As I mentioned in the post below I’m going up to Ann country for a couple of days. No, I’m not a stalker; it’s pure coincidence. I’ll be back on Wednesday or Thursday, when I will be reunited with my BSC collection for the first time since January. See you then.

I started reading BSC right after the end of first grade. For many years afterward, I dreamed of starting my own BSC and baby-sitting. I am sure that nearly all of the kids who read BSC felt the same way. It came as a great shock to me when, years later, I began baby-sitting and discovered that it was terrible, thankless work. Kids couldn’t give two shits about Kid-Kits or carnivals; they just want to watch tv, run around screaming, do dangerous things, and bop their siblings on the head. Things that almost no BSC client ever did and things that every kid I baby-sat did.

Are the BSC just super jedi master baby-sitters, and I was a crappy one, or is there something more sinister? Something that hints that BSC books do not adhere to realism in any form? I am sure that there are real kids that adore their baby-sitters, and the fact that the girls spent most of their free time sitting helped them to wrangle the clients, but the fact is that there seemed to be very little conflict to begin with. Does anyone agree with me and feel that the books present a false image of baby-sitting and how fun it is, an image which is soon shattered the first time you have to stop kids from killing each other one minute after the parents leave?

Speaking of kids, today I discovered that scholastic set up a message board for BSC. The main posters seem to be middle schoolers who love exclamation points. People seem to mostly want friends.

“hey _rae12amm whenever i get on here nobody is ever on so i don’t really know how 2 have conversations anyways but oh well i still like this site it’s fun and cool and safe!!!! unless people are stupid and come on here just 2 do bad stuff!! once i got on here cause i was showing my 8 year old sister this site so she could get on and there was a girl on here and her name was really bad it was horrible so on the message board i put that emily should do something and i don’t know what she did but she either told her 2 pick a diffrent name or get off the site because i haven’t seen the name or heard from her that said she had 2 pick a different name so i don’t know if she is still on here with a different name or what??? if somebody out there has had 2 change their name leave me a message saying what your name was and why you picked it!!!!!! i really want 2 know because i was going 2 start a survey today or a week from now!!!! bye love ya!!!!!”