Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies Part 1
This book, y'all. This horrible, amazing, mesmerizing book. It's a little intimidating to take on, especially after it was so epically scrambled, poached, and beaten by the fab 3_foot_6, but the kittehs and I will try.
Okay, I happen to love babies. I get intellectually that there are people who do not, and I respect that, but little baby feet and chubby cheeks make me weak in the knees, and I love, love, love, Alison Gopnik’s books about how baby minds work. That said, those are NOT pretty babies on the cover. I can’t even pinpoint what is off about them, but when someone with the babies rabies as bad as I have looks at them and goes “ugh” something is wrong. MA looks slightly narcotized, and dressed as if she’s trying to cover up those last pregnancy pounds.
But in fairness, as much as I slag on Hodges, it's nothing to this. . .horror, even with the less obnoxious spelling.
DON'T LOOK INTO THEIR EYES.
Extra punctuation on the BSC covers always puzzles me a bit. I can only read ”Little Miss Stoneybrook. . .and Dawn” with a big dramatic pause that doesn’t pay off, and “Hello, Mallory,” always sounds like “Hello, Newman.” On the other hand, my FREE BABY-SITTER BOOKMARK is still inside (by the way, I know that a bookmark may not seem that exciting, but the periods instead of exclamation points make me feel like I’m getting a letter from a bureaucrat the Department of Book Divisions), this book was originally titled “Mary Anne’s Babies,” which might actually have been creepier. Perhaps, as the BSC learned about “parenting,” Scholastic was trying to prepare us for the harsh realities of text speak in the near future.
No credited ghostie, so I must assume Ann lifted her dainty hand to this one all by herself. Interesting, because the zzzzzz opening of this chapter makes me miss the wackiness of Lerangis. Instead of some onomatopoeia or even Ellen Miles-style (misleading dialogue), we get Mary Anne again trying to blow our minds with the mystery of how she has a same-age stepsister. This excitement is interrupted by Mary Anne “calmly handling” finding a pair of hedge clippers in the bread drawer, instead of calling in the bomb squad or an exorcist. Dawn’s after school snack includes a “little square of tofu” and a radish.
Amusingly, Dawn says she saw the Shillabers’ baby bro that day, and MA patronizingly explains that Mariah and Miranda are just school friends, not close friends. I’m sure they still cry every day at lunch when they can’t hear the Kristy Thomas Cafeteria Comedy Hour. Anyway, Dawn and MA want their parents to have a baby, and Mary Anne is apparently all up in Sharon’s reproductive system when she says dismissively it’s not too late. Dawn points out they could adopt, because it “worked out” for Kristy’s family, but I like to think Richard would seriously side-eye an adoption agency that shipped a toddler on an international flight on a day’s notice. They insist Sharon wouldn’t even have to leave or take time off from work,or, indeed, even interact with her baby more than a few minutes a day, like Elizabeth, and then they grudgingly recall Nannie’s existence and say they probably couldn’t get “a grandparent” to move in. Since as of now, as far as MA knows she has no grandparents (Web of LIES, Richard), and Dawn’s grandparents spent 15 years judging Richard, that is probably true. But then, what grandparent could compete with TWO members of the BSC?
I still don’t understand why it doesn’t occur to them that for most of the working day they are at school, and thus not available for baby-sitting, plus what would Kristy do if they both cut back on sitting to take care of their own sibling? Considering they already had a brief freak out about being late for a BSC meeting an hour away (warning warning danger K. Ron!). . .
Now they segue to talking about Modern Living, which eventually gets retconned as a Short Takes class, the fodder for a dozen increasingly bizarre plot premises, but today those are a distant light on the horizon, and this merely replaces the blandly named “career class.” Dawn is just shocked and appalled at the idea of learning about finances and job hunting and marriage, and I’m in an odd position of begrudgingly thinking she’s right that this class, as it is taught, is at best a waste of time and arguably actively unhealthy. And honestly, I am sympathetic to the idea that someone who had just recently been through her parents’ divorce would bristle at being told she needed to learn about it in school, although it’s not clear this is actually part of the class. But her snotty pearl-clutching tone keeps me on an even “Cram it, Dawn,” a bit longer.
Mary Anne is relieved Logan-pie will be in her fake marriage class, and lies to us, the loyal reader, by omitting their recent break-up over him being a controlling freak in order to have the right to italicize that she is the only BSC member to have a steady boyfriend. Priorities! Also, Logan is “gentle,” and it always squicks me a bit when she describes him that way. Dawn undermines her objections by whining that it isn’t fair only eighth-graders have to learn about real life, unless she’s making a meta-comment on the Time Warp.
Somehow this has used up almost a whole hour and now they must run lest the face the Wrath of K.Ron, but first MA has to feed kibble, which surprises me because my cats are little tyrants about their schedule, and “after school” seems a weird time for feeding. Also, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.
Chapter 2
And on that exciting start we coast into. . .more nothing. The opposite of “outgoing” is not “ingrown,” MA. We get a hypothetical Claudia outfit that isn’t even that interesting, although I’m amused MA admits Claudia’s spelling drives her crazy sometimes. Dawn has a amazing hair, and is a totally individualistic individual except when she’s not. Also amusing, MA says that Jessi and Mallory are forced to dress like her.
MA gets a job with the Salem twins. That is all.
Chapter 3
Oh, a wedding fake-out. How very.
Also, individually fake-marrying eleven couples seems like a very valuable use of class time. Mary Anne is relieved she didn’t make them kiss, thus beginning the long, headdesking trend of saying IT’S NOT REAL, MA. (Although having read some reviews of Hush, Hush, maybe Mrs. Boyden isn’t the creepiest teacher around.)
Anyway, Mrs. Boyden informed the class the first day that they are biologically capable of becoming parents (possibly the only reference to menstruation in the whole series?), so obviously, fake marriage is the next logical step. In Bizarro Land. She asks how many of them feel capable of “parenting, of being part of a couple, or of living on your own?” And those are three radically different things.
Dopey Mary Anne raises her hand because she knows everything about kids, and boasts that she can “change diapers and everything.” Mrs. Boyden refrains from laughing in her face.
I, however, do not refrain from laughing at Mrs. Boyden when she says “The best way to experience adult life is to live it,” and that’s why she is fake-marrying them all off en masse, so they can experience what life will be like if they join a cult. No wonder MA is so gung-ho. Some poor nameless unworthy-of-BSC-notice schlub correctly observes that this is bullshit. Sit next to me, anonymous voice of reason. I have chocolate and lolcats. Meanwhile, Mary Anne and Logan grin creepily at each other in anticipation of their “marriage.” “It was an exciting prospect. I knew we were ready to take the big step. Well, I thought we were. Well, I wasn’t sure at all, but I definitely wanted to find out.” Holy cats, there are so many things wrong with that. Aside from the WTF MARY ANNE YOU ARE THIRTEEN AND THIS IS MIDDLE SCHOOL, that completely sounds like a valid way to simulate the adult decision to get married. I want Richard to whisk her off to that school Milhouse’s girlfriend got sent to. “Ne pas de boys!”
The class supposedly discusses what marriage really means and all that jazz until Shawna Riverson says marriage means “you have, like, a plastic bride and groom on your wedding cake, not those bride and groom mice or something. Or maybe you could have, like, a giant plastic wedding bell and some bluebirds or something.” I think Shawna is either stoned or perhaps trolling, because what is that even. I know she tried to cheat off of Claudia, but that’s not airheaded; that’s like serious head trauma.
(I’m stealing this joke from 3_foot_6, but in lolcat form.)
So naturally, after lecturing them all that marriage is very serious business, Mrs. Boyden mass marries them off by force the next class. Fabulous.
She obnoxiously asks if they are all engaged, and Gordon Brown steps up to represent the four boys without partners, saying that all the girls have been “taken.” Erica Blumberg protests, and for some reason, as a kid I remember not liking Erica Blumberg, even though I nornally would have been all down with this. Gordon says FINE, they’ve just been used up, and Erica insists they are not commodities, and Shawna asks if she means “condiments,” and that confused the HELL out of me as a kid.
Mrs. Boyden gets all cross, as if this wasn’t a completely obvious and foreseeable issue, and says two couples will be boys only, and asks “how they want to handle that.” Um. All the boys declare they aren’t going to be “the girl,” and Logan suggests they could decide later, and secretly, and Mrs. Boyden is all judgy about that. “Okay,” replied our teacher, in the tone of voice grown-ups use when they mean, “If that’s the way you want it, but I think it’s a pretty poor idea. I guess you’ll just have to find out for yourselves.”
What. The. Fuck. Look, I get that it’s 1992 and the idea of gay marriage is little more than a punchline to most people, but seriously, what the fuck is this? Is she basing her curriculum on “Fascinating Womanhood” and “Man of Steel and Velvet”? Or that Lessons for a 50s housewife article?* Is she teaching them about sexual positions? For the purposes of this class, how the hell are the assignments gendered, and how is that not creepy as fuck?
*actually, my mom won a “homemaking” contest in high school--which she entered mostly because doing so allowed her to skip gym class that day--and won a “Housewife’s Diary” which is full of AMAZING tips, especially the beauty regimen and the hostessing recommendations. So even if that article is apocryphal, it’s pretty damn close to the actual prize my mom won around 1960. It doesn’t quite say “nothing about your day was important,” but it does have a lot of the other elements.
The thing is, I think there can be a place for kids to learn, shall we say, life skills, in school, like making a budget or writing a resume, or even good interpersonal skills.
But I seriously can’t think of anything appropriate you could teach specifically about marriage to thirteen-year-olds that couldn’t be contextualized as useful outside a romantic relationship. Like, budgeting should be applicable to any number of situations, including living with roommates. I guess you could do some kind of conflict resolution training, but unless it includes make-up sex, again, that should be applicable to lots of kinds of relationships. You could do some corny “what are my values” type exercises and quizzes, which are of limited value since one HOPES thirteen-year-olds could still mature, but might at least demonstrate that you can actively consider those questions and debate them, and there are lots of different ways to live a fulfilling and ethical life. But NONE of those are reliant on one person being “the wife.” Ew, ew, ew.
(Here’s a thing about my high school: we were required, among other things, to have a “consumer education” credit and an “applied arts” credit which were supposed to teach us those practical skills. However, we also had incredibly heavily weighted grades which effectively penalized students who were getting all As in honors classes for taking non-honors electives, even if they got As in those other classes. So pretty much everyone with heavily honors weighted schedules took the only honors class to fill the consumer ed requirement, AP Microeconomics. Any conclusions to be drawn about the kinds of people who go onto manage millions on Wall Street without ever learning to check their credit reports are left to the reader.)
Anyway. Mrs. Boyden marries them off and ominously announces they may be asked to be couples outside of class, which is creepy as fuck. If she means they will have assignments that they need to do together, that’s one thing, but she sounds like she’s actually expecting them to act romantically towards each other. Then she assigns them to get together, discuss finances, and determine if they could be financially independent. Um, no, because they are children. This is so dumb. You can learn to budget for thirteen-year-old goals, with thirteen-year-old income, or you can learn to make a fake budget with fake income for the purpose of actually looking at adult cost of living, but you can’t mix and match. This is asinine.
Logan and MA annoyingly calls themselves “sweetheart” and “honey” before settling down with the want ads and deciding they can settle for a two bedroom apartment for a few years. Reality slaps them in the face when the first apartment they find is $2000 a month. Ahahahahaha. Although while I believe Stoneybrook has totally inflated housing cost, my two bedroom in Chicago costs less than that in 2013, and I live in a decent north side neighborhood. Even now, glancing over the craigslist ads for Fairfield County, there are lots of apartments for less than that. Not that would be affordable on adolescent baby-sitting wages, but I’m pretty sure Ann made that number up. (Seriously, Ann, I do fact-checking for SNARKS.)
Logan suggests they could rent a place for thirty cents a month, and I don’t know if he’s pulling that out of thin air or if $3.60 represents a significant chunk of their combined actual income. I mean, geez, Logan, at least spring for a dollar a month. Groceries are expensive, too, even when Logan volunteers to give up meat “because it’s not good for you anyway,” so they are forced to admit their teen marriage can only flower in one of their parental homes. But where? Under Richard’s gimlet eye where he would “watch Logan all the time” or with their child in-laws? It’s a dilemma.
Grudgingly, Logan agrees to pretend live in Mary Anne’s room, even though he might get girl cooties. This totally seems like a valuable education endeavor. I would say that if being in a girl’s room still gives you the yips, you probably aren’t ready for marriage, but I never took Modern Living.
Chapter 4
Mrs. Salem is understandably tired looking, and Mary Anne is obnoxiously judgy, based on her experience sitting for the Pikes and the Wedding Week of Idiotic Entitlement. Twin infants, no big deal, am I right?
I guess Mrs. Salem has gotten a grip on things since s he took her newborn twins to an infant care class and couldn’t figure out one might need a diaper change, because now she’s super organized. Also, the babies are something more than six months, and I’m pretty sure a lot of the developmental stuff in these chapters are way off, because Ann, like MA, is hazy on the difference between “real babies” and “dolls.”
Mary Anne continues to be judgy, looking over her parenting notes from Modern Living, and I’m frankly kind of curious to what they are allegedly learning. But the twins wake up in a good mood, and deign to allow MA to change them and dress them up in fancy clothes.
Ann soapboxes that Mrs. Salem only uses cloth diapers (because god forbid Mr. Salem change a diaper, or be part of the discussion) because she “found out” how bad disposables are for the environment, and even though they do loads of laundry every day, they never complain. First of all, how do you know, MA? You get judgy when Mrs. Salem looks tired; why would she discuss laundry woes with you? Secondly, it seems like the jury is still out on the overall degree of impact of cloth versus disposable, when you account for the water and energy use of all that laundry (the best-case scenario depends on an energy efficient washer and air-drying). The few people I know who cloth diaper cite financial savings more than greenness, and my all-organic-food-eating, no-tv-ever niece wears disposables--but my brother does change them. (He says he thinks he changes more nappies in a weekend than my dad did for the two of us ever, which is probably true.) But I guess it’s good they took that mostly useless infant care class--I’m not sure I would know how to change a cloth diaper without a visit to YouTube or EHow.
Mary Anne then pops one baby back in a crib to carry the other down to the high chairs and leaves that baby there while she retrieves the other, which is ridiculous.
I’m pretty sure most self-respecting babies would scream their heads off if they woke up from a nap and were promptly changed and stuck back in their cribs, or sat in their high chairs and left alone. (Also, do you even put babies in high chairs for bottles--idk, my niece only nursed and went in her chair when she started eating cereal and pureed veggies and stuff. My cousins had bottles, but usually while they were being held--it seems logistically awkward to hold a bottle in a high chair--you have to have the bottle up way high or the head tilted way back. Maybe for twins it would be easier not to hold them, though.) MA notes that the Salems must have been pleased when the babies learned to hold things, and there’s a big difference, IME, for a baby being able to hold something and for them to hold up a whole bottle for drinking.
Mary Anne kicks herself for not putting them in matching outfits to announce their twin-osity, “so people would know for sure they were twins, and not two unrelated babies.” Oh, FFS. Besides, did we learn nothing from Carolyn and Marilyn? She takes them out for their walk and everyone oohs and ahhs at the pretty babies, including a couple of heathen children NOT IN THE BSC SITTING POOL. They ask MA with awe if baby-sitting is hard, and she says Nah, it’s the best thing in the world, and she can’t wait to have a baby. Oy.
At home, she enthuses to Dawn about how the Salem twins were angels, and didn’t even cry, and it always sits badly with me when people talk about babies not crying as if it’s a virtue or a behavioral issue. Dawn agrees babies are wonderful, and they both whine about how they just can’t understand why their parents won’t have one RIGHT NOW. “I thought that was supposed to be part of a marriage. Look how badly Kristy’s mom and Watson wanted a baby after they got married.”
If there was ever any doubt, Richard + Sharon > Watson and Elizabeth, for having better sense than expecting a baby to do the work of blending their family together. This is a horrible, shitty message, even if the end of the book is that parenting is HARD. Babies are not the default.
They decide they would prefer a sister, so they could dress her up in jewelry and barrettes and stretchy headbands, and seriously, if this is why you want a baby, you need to get a grip. They moon about names, until Richard and Sharon come in and bust them. Dawn says obnoxiously that they’ve noticed a pattern of first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby carriage, and Richard and Sharon awesomely say “LOL no.” Sharon says between them they already have three kids and a cat, and considering how much Mary Anne angsts over Sharon not accepting Tigger, I think it’s kind of cute Sharon lists him as a member of the family. Mary Anne insists they need to have a baby together, and they say nope, they don’t feel the need at this stage in their lives. But MA continues to dream of baby names, making a list that goes “Tara, Lizzie, Margaret, Tara, Adele, Tara, Frannie, Tara, Charity, Bea. . .” Apart from the compulsive amnesia resulting in four Taras, this is probably meant to make Mary Anne look a bit prissy and old-fashioned, but she’d be pretty solidly in the vanguard of hipster parents, living in Park Slope, judging all the day long. . .
Meanwhile, if I were Sharon I’d be keeping my birth control under lock and key, as the girls are about an inch from subbing her pills with Tic-Tacs for the Greater Good.
Chapter 5
Mary Anne and Logan nerdily make a whole stack of graphs and data about how amazingly, thirteen-year-olds are not financially independent, since Logan worries Mrs. Boyden will think they blew off the assignment if they point out the obvious. This assignment has literally no bearing on the rest of the class. But they even used a protractor, guys!
Mrs. Boyden sits silently in front of the room with a carton of eggs, and Mary Anne frets as to whether she is mad at them. Maybe it’s in the SMS teachers contract that they have to teach a dozen ridiculous classes of low educational merit, but once in awhile they get a free pass to pelt the students with eggs?
Anyway, the bell rings and she announces that they have been married “for awhile” and now have become parents. Perhaps it would make more sense to teach Sex Ed BEFORE this, rather than suggest that babies just appear from the fairies, or the cabbage patch, or the supermarket, or that we are completely devoid of any choice whatsoever in the matter. The kids are all baffled, even though the Egg Sitting assignment is enough of a thing to have its own TVTropes page, where a troper deemed this a “pretty good” BSC book. Hmm.
She calls them up one by one to receive an egg, and perhaps these children really need some lessons in logic, as they are unable to grasp the analogy until she specifically tells them their eggs are their babies. At which point Logan, who has been tossing it in the air, immediately hands it off to MA. This plot is off to a great start. Man, I miss Buffy looking at her egg and noting that as a punishment for tardiness, this is “very abstract.”
And that’s not even a very good episode of Buffy. Although I will almost definitely be citing it more, because “demon parasites” make as much sense as the rest of the plot.
Mrs. Boyden says that for the next few weeks, the eggs must be “fed regularly, clothed, taken to the doctor, and especially, watched over.”
I have to say this experiment has never made any sense to me. Like, I get that eggs are fragile, and babies are fragile, especially in the early soft spot days, but that’s never seemed to me like even in the top ten reasons of why babies are hard work. It’s also totally unclear what Mrs. Boyden actually means, since all they have to do is hold the eggs and carry them around, and I don’t really see how that’s like messing around with bottles (since no one in the Brook breastfeeds) or changing diapers or getting your baby dressed for two minutes before he or she has one of those poops that escapes the diaper and goes all the way up the back, or the baby crying for hours and not being able to soothe it. Or doing all that while recovering from labor, delivery, hormonal changes, and sleep deprivation. I mean, none of that can really be simulated, but I don’t see how “pretend you are feeding your egg” does much.
As I mentioned, it was pretty much impossible to take a lot of electives if you were honor tracked at my high school, but there was one child development class where occasionally people had some of those dolls. And I, for one, loved the hell out of that Project Runway where they had the fake dolls, even if the premise was incredibly forced. (The challenge of designing for babies is not that they cry; it’s that they don’t have mini-adult bodies, and the clothes have to be relatively easy to put on and made of a relatively restricted range of fabrics.) Some people saw it as a jump the shark moment, but please; that happened like six seasons ago, so I’m totally down with seeing hardcore Elena announce her baby was named “Asshole,” and sweet former manny Fabio snuggling his and my beloved Comrade Snape the Undercover Dancer say, deadpan, “Oh. I’m a father now.” “I barely had time to get dressed.”
Sorry, I got lost in the stupid. Mrs. B says they will be on the honor system, another reason this project is dumb. I was a pretty nerdy, conscientious, neurotic, and guilt-ridden kid, but even I wouldn’t get up for a two am feeding for AN EGG. And if I had taken it as seriously as these kids, my mom would have been down at the school kicking ass and taking names.
Shawna asks if they really have to take the egg to the doctor, and Mrs. B acts incredibly put upon, but it’s kind of the logical extension to this dumb speech she just gave. I don’t get the educational value of sitting in my room pretending I’m at the pediatrician with my egg. But basically, all Mrs. B really wants is for them to keep the eggs in sight at all times, and kicks into gear some kind of experiment in mass hypnosis when she tells them they are not to refer to their eggs as eggs, but as children. But because I am not a product of Ann’s warped mind, she has no power over me! Seriously, I think she must be some kind of Svengali to exercise this kind of mind control. I’m not sure if she and Kristy would be more likely to team up for world denomination, or if she should become K. Ron’s SuperVillain Nemesis.
In her secret lair, BoydenHoyden prepares the toxin. “Soon!” she cackles. “Soon, I will destroy this town. The early bird gets the worm. . .and HATCHES THE EGGS!”
The next morning, tragedy! The children of Stoneybrook have disappeared, leaving in their place. . .eggs. Granted, a lot of the parents couldn’t tell the difference. But luckily, in the Sekrit Hedkarters, K.Ron the Mighty meets with her ragtag crew: Caludia Sweets, Miss Mousey, the Sugarless Sophisticate, Tofu the Terrible, Ginger Eleven, and the Black One.
“We will restore the children of Stoneybrook to their rightful places, in our talent shows and forced marches,” K. Ron declares! “We will. . .love them until they hatch and imprint on us, as it should always have been! Caludia! We need shoebox nurseries with your artistic touch! Miss Mousey! I want you knitting egg caps! And above all, remember. It’s for the children.” She trails off, her eyes gleaming. “The children,” she hisses. Yeah, I’m not sure which was the supervillain there.
Logan and Mary Anne try to figure out how to carry their baby around all day, and it is kind of shitty to spring this on them--even the hospital usually makes you show you have a carseat before you can leave. Mary Anne decrees their egg is a girl and puts her in her purse. Logan frets about what will happen during gym class. I already don’t care.
In gym, Mary Anne is judgy about girls who set their eggs on the floor, because they might not take the right one, a completely realistic parenting issue. At lunch, she insists they mark their egg, and Logan says they can paint her with food coloring. “It’s painless and non-toxic.” IT’S AN EGG. They get way too involved in “feeding her,” and I’m already exhausted.
1. Hilariously, as I was writing this, I was watching 1776, which includes Ben Franklin, cute nerdy "obnoxious and disliked" John Adams, and hottie Thomas Jefferson singing about "playing midwives to an egg."
2. I have a bunch of deadlines for things this month, so my updates/commenting may be sporadic.