#20 Kristy and the Walking Disaster Part 1 (Chapters 1-4)
Here I am, finally snarking the first book I said I would snark! I felt its day had come due to a few stars aligning in my life. One being the fact that I finally found my Kindle, which means I have access to the e-books once again, and the other being that baseball season is almost upon us and there's nothing in the world I love more than baseball.
So to get in the mood for the upcoming season, I chose to snark a book that probably has the most abuse of baseball terminology and poorly written game action since the last Kristy book I snarked, which was Kristy's Mystery Admirier.
Baseball games have a specific flow to them, and pre-game activities include the exchange of lineup cards between opposing managers and the umpires, usually at the plate. Since this is a baseball/softball heavy book, I'll extend the simile of pre-game activities to include the standard cover snark.
I actually had a copy with this particular cover and that ugly shade of gray. Google tells me that there was another cover with a bright blue background and of course there's the new cover art, which has the exact same image of the team and Kristy looking way too proud of herself for coaching a band of fuckups, but with a pleasing lavender background.
The caption asks the reader to identify the walking disaster. Instead of zeroing in on the obvious choice of Kristy and her inflated sense of self worth, nope, it's Jackie Rodowsky, who was introduced 10 books earlier as a complete failure at living because he falls down a lot. Apparently in this book he has yet to master basic skills like dressing himself. The ripped jeans have since made a comeback, though, so maybe Jackie was a genius all along.
I want to think that the artist tried to convey Jackie as an oddball due to his cap being turned to the side, but that look has been around for ages in hip hop circles-at least as early as Public Enemy in the 80s:
And besides, there's a pretty little blonde girl in the back row with the same thing going on. If the media has told us anything, it's that otherwise offensive and/or annoying things are adorable as long as a cute blonde girl does them.
There's not a lot else going on to snark about. Kristy's Café Press team T-shirt? I guess. At least all the kids showed up in appropriate footwear. Let me tell you about that one for a moment. I used to coach youth swimming and before every weekend morning practice with my young kids (ages 7-9) we'd do some dry land exercises. At least one dumbass parent sent a child to the dry land workout wearing Uggs, sandals, or some other shoes that weren't conducive to running and calisthenics. Now, we weren't sweatin' to the oldies or anything, but we did do a bit of running and other cardio. And I asked the parents, time and again, to have the kids wear the right footwear, because watching kids lose a flip flop or stumble over Uggs while jogging got really old really fast.
Anyway, enough about my unfortunate life as a youth sports coach. It'll come up again once Kristy's unfortunate life as a youth sports coach gets underway in this book.
Chapter 1
Andrew and Karen arrive for their weekend at The Big House and Kristy tells us all about her stepsiblings: Karen is loud and annoying and Andrew is sort of in fact he's very quiet and shy. Which one is it, ANM?
Andrew wants to play catch with David Michael, which sets up the rest of the book as a baseball story, I guess. Rather than head out to play catch on a lovely afternoon, which is one of my favorite activities, Kristy blathers on about her family situation because nobody ever had step-siblings and a step-father and a boatload of people in one house at the same time.
Again there's a baseball inkling as Kristy explains her step-dad Watson and how they went from mortal enemies to buds over the last 20 books or so, though not through their mutual like of baseball. The Baby-Sitters Club is what forged their bond! Of course it is.
It turns out that Kristy doesn't have time to play catch because it's almost 5pm on Friday and she has to get to the Baby-Sitters Club meeting. Unfortunately, Charlie's not home yet so we have to endure more of the Brewer-Thomas clan until we can get to the second most dreadfully boring institution in Stoneybrook.
Kristy calls Karen "not naughty, but fearless" with "a wild imagination." In parentheses, Watson confirms that he's an awful parent by saying his daughter's imagination is fertile.
Oh and there's foreshadowing to the arrival of Emily Michelle four books from now as Kristy thinks her mom is nuts for wanting another kid in an already crowded house and at her age of (at least) 37. Personally I'm not too big on the idea of having a kid that late either, but I don't judge others for wanting that.
Karen, Andrew, and DM are playing (or trying to) softball in the backyard. Kristy offers some hitting advice to DM and on the next pitch he gets a solid hit. Kristy is psyched and DM says he wishes he could play ball on a real team, "with a coach and everything." Andrew and Karen agree. Before Kristy can have a Great Idea, Charlie comes home and they flee to the BSC meeting.
But before all that Kristy has to tell us about her friends in the club. One thing about this typically boring and repetitive section from every book stood out to me: Kristy says she doesn't care a thing (with italics!) about clothes, but calls Mary Anne's old threads from the era before Richard Spier started getting laid "babyish." If you don't care about clothes, why would you be clockin' someone else's look?
Other semi-interesting tidbits from the character worksheet section are the day that Claudia went to school with glitter in her hair, a brief mention of Kristy's daddy issues (because he lives in California now and Dawn's from California), and the fact that Stacey's not in this book! For a minute I'd forgotten that this was when she briefly moved back to New York. I'm living for this because I hate her.
Chapter 2
Everyone arrives for the BSC meeting while Claudia searches for snacks hidden around her room. MA has Tigger with her and everyone goes nuts over him. To be honest, I would too. I'm a major cat person and I have to pet every cat I see.
I imagine that's how most of the meeting went
More boilerplate narrative, this time about the BSC's operations, protocols on pizza parties (pizza toasts are not mentioned), the chain of command, and recruitment bonuses. The description ends with the dreaded club notebook, which Kristy acknowledges as possibly annoying and useless, but too fucking bad because she said so. Although there is a point in there about using the notebook to communicate important information about food allergies among baby-sitting charges, but I can't for the life of me recall when something like that has ever been recorded in the notebook. Perhaps the sitters took up all their time writing back and forth in the same book to record something that’s actually important.
The phone rings and it's Mrs. Rodowsky asking for a sitter. Dawn groans because Jackie R is a mess of a human being. Even if he was as much of a chore as the girls make him out to be, don't fucking groan when a customer is within earshot. Wait until Kristy hangs up and then talk all the shit you want about him. Act like a fucking professional, Dawn. Like grown-ups do.
The sitting job comes down to Kristy and Dawn and my other least favorite BSC member graciously offers it to Kristy. She describes Jackie as accident-prone in the worst way possible, which we'll see more of later in the book as I struggle to see what's so bad about the poor kid.
Toward the end of the meeting, Tigger turns up missing. MA is about to leap off the roof when Janine comes in holding the cat. She's described as looking a lot like Grumpy Cat herself, but come on, everyone loves cats. Especially a cat who was hanging out on Janine's computer.
Chapter 3
It's Saturday and the Delaney and Papadakis kids are visiting Chez Thomas-Brewer. Karen, Andrew, and DM are playing softball with their visitors: Max and Amanda D and Linny and Hannie P. Kristy observes that their game is "pathetic" and she can see why the kids never bothered to join Little League because they suck.
Now, I don't remember a lot about youth sports in the 80s because I never was on an organized team (and I grew up the 80s!), but I never thought a kid wouldn’t be allowed to play on a team because they weren't good at the sport. I didn't participate in organized team sports because my family never had the money to sign me up for teams and sports. I just played with my friends. I was always under the impression that every kid on the team got to play, at least at the lower youth levels.
Anyway, Kristy has to tell us why each kid sucks, which doesn't always match up with the rest of the narrative. In this chapter, DM is klutzy as hell, tripping over everything include the bat and the ball, which I don't even get. Unless you step on those items, it's nearly impossible to fall over them. According to Kristy, the only thing DM can do well is pitch, but if you're always tripping over your own feet how the hell can you throw the ball? Karen and Andrew are described as not entirely terrible but with little detail as to why (aside from Andrew being a small four-year-old catcher).
Kristy puts together an impromptu coaching session after reminding the reader for the second time (in parentheticals, no less) that she likes/loves sports a lot. She actually offers sound advice on baseball fundamentals and has a really cute way of telling Andrew not to sweat being too short to field his position, which is the first and quite possibly last piece of the book being accurate and nice.
The kids go back to playing and they still suck, so Kristy calls a softball clinic…which is kind of what she was already doing, but whatever. The kids are really into this idea and DM drops another hint at wanting to play in an organized league. Kristy encourages him and the other kids to go for it, but they all offer excuses against it: too young (Andrew), too female (Karen and Hannie), too crappy (Linny, DM, and Max).
Amanda says she doesn't care about baseball and Hannie throws shade back at her because apparently those two don't get along.
Amanda v. Hannie/Tatianna v. Tyra Sanchez, generational incarnations of the Great American Throwdown
Amanda proves her worth in the story for something other than being someone for Hannie to snark at. She brings up Bart Taylor to Kristy-a 13-year-old boy in the neighborhood who coaches a team called Bart's Bashers. DM jumps on the idea of joining the team and Kristy agrees to talk to him, even as she says she doesn't like the idea of talking to a boy.
I mean, I get her gist. She says half of boys her age are normal and the other half are jerks, and in her neighborhood, about both of either group are also snobs. Nearly 20 years later for me, and men haven't changed a damn bit.
She calculates the odds of Bart being a "regular, old nice guy" as 25%, opposed to the other 75% which contains plain jerks, plain snobs, and snobby jerks. There's a brief mention of what could be construed as class warfare between Kristy and her brothers attending public school versus the rest of the kids in her 'hood attending private school but ultimately it goes nowhere.
Krsity takes Shannon (the dog) out for a walk and sees "a very, very, very cute guy" in the Taylor's yard. Three very's from a girl who doesn't think about boys?
She assumes it's not Bart because rich people don't do their own yardwork. The story avoids veering into Desperate Housewives territory with the hot young thing working as the yard guy when Bart introduces himself to Kristy.
Although that might have been fun
Bart takes to Kristy right away. He likes her dog and he's looking at her as though she were a glamorous movie star. She thinks Bart is pretty hot, too, and she's all flustered about it. That's hella cute and reminds me of my awkward feelings around cute boys back in the day.
Kristy brings up the kids who want to play ball and Bart says he can't take on more players (especially not shitty players like those guys!) and in the narrative (rather than dialogue) they come up with the idea for Kristy to form her own team, which falls in line more with the "anyone can play" idea that I thought youth sports was built upon. She graciously promises to accept kids "no matter how…klutzy or uncoordinated." How nice.
Kristy decides to turn to Watson for help because he loves baseball and is good at organizing things. Oh and that she loves Bart Taylor.
Chapter 4
MA is baby-sitting for the Perkins girls. My incredible disbelief at the Amazing Perkins Sisters and their bag of astonishing tricks probably started in this book. The Perkins girls have committed many sins over the course of this book series: memorizing cookie dough recipes and baking them to perfection while teenage baby-sitters stand in awe, etc. But this is the book where Gabby Perkins, all of 2.5 years old, joins a softball team. Even with concessions that allow her to hit from a tee. That's fine. I just cannot at a kid who's that age and would actually be coordinated and motivated enough to swing a bat and want to play ball all on her own. I used to teach mommy and me swimming lessons and I had 2.5 year olds in my classes. Most of them couldn't even talk, much less figure out how to propel themselves in the water. But Gabby Perkins can do all this, and more! She's the miracle child.
I'm sorry, guys. I'll lay off that for a while. Just know that's one of my buttons in this book series.
So MA is at the Perkins' place and Jamie Newton and Nina Marshall show up. Chewy the dog is being annoying so MA puts him out in the yard. In the twenty seconds I assume this takes-because really, how long does it take to put the dog outside?-the kids have gone stir crazy. There's a collision and a minor spillage of water which exasperates MA so she suggests the kids go outside to play catch. Myriah knows better than all of us and objects to the idea of playing ball around Chewy, but MA chooses to keep him outside.
Myriah has the natural baseball instinct of Casey Stengel (a legendary manager for several Major League Baseball teams, most notably the New York Yankees) and immediately organizes a game with teams and everything. Jamie is afraid of the ball and ducks the first pitch he sees, which ends up in Chewy's mouth. The kids chase him around fruitlessly for a while before they give up and turn to the second batter, which is Gabby. They've chosen to toss a wiffle ball to her and Gabby gets a hit! Surprisingly she doesn't have the MLB Rulebook memorized so she doesn't know what to do after a hit and is tagged out at the plate by her own older sister.
The rest of the game goes similarly. Myriah is described as a pretty good player and when MA asks her about Little League, the other kids get excited about Kristy's fledgling team. The kids play ball through the end of the chapter and Chewy steals their balls (heh). There's no mention of the Walking Disaster yet, but I know it's coming in Chapter 5, which is in Part II!
So to get in the mood for the upcoming season, I chose to snark a book that probably has the most abuse of baseball terminology and poorly written game action since the last Kristy book I snarked, which was Kristy's Mystery Admirier.
Baseball games have a specific flow to them, and pre-game activities include the exchange of lineup cards between opposing managers and the umpires, usually at the plate. Since this is a baseball/softball heavy book, I'll extend the simile of pre-game activities to include the standard cover snark.
I actually had a copy with this particular cover and that ugly shade of gray. Google tells me that there was another cover with a bright blue background and of course there's the new cover art, which has the exact same image of the team and Kristy looking way too proud of herself for coaching a band of fuckups, but with a pleasing lavender background.
The caption asks the reader to identify the walking disaster. Instead of zeroing in on the obvious choice of Kristy and her inflated sense of self worth, nope, it's Jackie Rodowsky, who was introduced 10 books earlier as a complete failure at living because he falls down a lot. Apparently in this book he has yet to master basic skills like dressing himself. The ripped jeans have since made a comeback, though, so maybe Jackie was a genius all along.
I want to think that the artist tried to convey Jackie as an oddball due to his cap being turned to the side, but that look has been around for ages in hip hop circles-at least as early as Public Enemy in the 80s:
And besides, there's a pretty little blonde girl in the back row with the same thing going on. If the media has told us anything, it's that otherwise offensive and/or annoying things are adorable as long as a cute blonde girl does them.
There's not a lot else going on to snark about. Kristy's Café Press team T-shirt? I guess. At least all the kids showed up in appropriate footwear. Let me tell you about that one for a moment. I used to coach youth swimming and before every weekend morning practice with my young kids (ages 7-9) we'd do some dry land exercises. At least one dumbass parent sent a child to the dry land workout wearing Uggs, sandals, or some other shoes that weren't conducive to running and calisthenics. Now, we weren't sweatin' to the oldies or anything, but we did do a bit of running and other cardio. And I asked the parents, time and again, to have the kids wear the right footwear, because watching kids lose a flip flop or stumble over Uggs while jogging got really old really fast.
Anyway, enough about my unfortunate life as a youth sports coach. It'll come up again once Kristy's unfortunate life as a youth sports coach gets underway in this book.
Chapter 1
Andrew and Karen arrive for their weekend at The Big House and Kristy tells us all about her stepsiblings: Karen is loud and annoying and Andrew is sort of in fact he's very quiet and shy. Which one is it, ANM?
Andrew wants to play catch with David Michael, which sets up the rest of the book as a baseball story, I guess. Rather than head out to play catch on a lovely afternoon, which is one of my favorite activities, Kristy blathers on about her family situation because nobody ever had step-siblings and a step-father and a boatload of people in one house at the same time.
Again there's a baseball inkling as Kristy explains her step-dad Watson and how they went from mortal enemies to buds over the last 20 books or so, though not through their mutual like of baseball. The Baby-Sitters Club is what forged their bond! Of course it is.
It turns out that Kristy doesn't have time to play catch because it's almost 5pm on Friday and she has to get to the Baby-Sitters Club meeting. Unfortunately, Charlie's not home yet so we have to endure more of the Brewer-Thomas clan until we can get to the second most dreadfully boring institution in Stoneybrook.
Kristy calls Karen "not naughty, but fearless" with "a wild imagination." In parentheses, Watson confirms that he's an awful parent by saying his daughter's imagination is fertile.
Oh and there's foreshadowing to the arrival of Emily Michelle four books from now as Kristy thinks her mom is nuts for wanting another kid in an already crowded house and at her age of (at least) 37. Personally I'm not too big on the idea of having a kid that late either, but I don't judge others for wanting that.
Karen, Andrew, and DM are playing (or trying to) softball in the backyard. Kristy offers some hitting advice to DM and on the next pitch he gets a solid hit. Kristy is psyched and DM says he wishes he could play ball on a real team, "with a coach and everything." Andrew and Karen agree. Before Kristy can have a Great Idea, Charlie comes home and they flee to the BSC meeting.
But before all that Kristy has to tell us about her friends in the club. One thing about this typically boring and repetitive section from every book stood out to me: Kristy says she doesn't care a thing (with italics!) about clothes, but calls Mary Anne's old threads from the era before Richard Spier started getting laid "babyish." If you don't care about clothes, why would you be clockin' someone else's look?
Other semi-interesting tidbits from the character worksheet section are the day that Claudia went to school with glitter in her hair, a brief mention of Kristy's daddy issues (because he lives in California now and Dawn's from California), and the fact that Stacey's not in this book! For a minute I'd forgotten that this was when she briefly moved back to New York. I'm living for this because I hate her.
Chapter 2
Everyone arrives for the BSC meeting while Claudia searches for snacks hidden around her room. MA has Tigger with her and everyone goes nuts over him. To be honest, I would too. I'm a major cat person and I have to pet every cat I see.
I imagine that's how most of the meeting went
More boilerplate narrative, this time about the BSC's operations, protocols on pizza parties (pizza toasts are not mentioned), the chain of command, and recruitment bonuses. The description ends with the dreaded club notebook, which Kristy acknowledges as possibly annoying and useless, but too fucking bad because she said so. Although there is a point in there about using the notebook to communicate important information about food allergies among baby-sitting charges, but I can't for the life of me recall when something like that has ever been recorded in the notebook. Perhaps the sitters took up all their time writing back and forth in the same book to record something that’s actually important.
The phone rings and it's Mrs. Rodowsky asking for a sitter. Dawn groans because Jackie R is a mess of a human being. Even if he was as much of a chore as the girls make him out to be, don't fucking groan when a customer is within earshot. Wait until Kristy hangs up and then talk all the shit you want about him. Act like a fucking professional, Dawn. Like grown-ups do.
The sitting job comes down to Kristy and Dawn and my other least favorite BSC member graciously offers it to Kristy. She describes Jackie as accident-prone in the worst way possible, which we'll see more of later in the book as I struggle to see what's so bad about the poor kid.
Toward the end of the meeting, Tigger turns up missing. MA is about to leap off the roof when Janine comes in holding the cat. She's described as looking a lot like Grumpy Cat herself, but come on, everyone loves cats. Especially a cat who was hanging out on Janine's computer.
Chapter 3
It's Saturday and the Delaney and Papadakis kids are visiting Chez Thomas-Brewer. Karen, Andrew, and DM are playing softball with their visitors: Max and Amanda D and Linny and Hannie P. Kristy observes that their game is "pathetic" and she can see why the kids never bothered to join Little League because they suck.
Now, I don't remember a lot about youth sports in the 80s because I never was on an organized team (and I grew up the 80s!), but I never thought a kid wouldn’t be allowed to play on a team because they weren't good at the sport. I didn't participate in organized team sports because my family never had the money to sign me up for teams and sports. I just played with my friends. I was always under the impression that every kid on the team got to play, at least at the lower youth levels.
Anyway, Kristy has to tell us why each kid sucks, which doesn't always match up with the rest of the narrative. In this chapter, DM is klutzy as hell, tripping over everything include the bat and the ball, which I don't even get. Unless you step on those items, it's nearly impossible to fall over them. According to Kristy, the only thing DM can do well is pitch, but if you're always tripping over your own feet how the hell can you throw the ball? Karen and Andrew are described as not entirely terrible but with little detail as to why (aside from Andrew being a small four-year-old catcher).
Kristy puts together an impromptu coaching session after reminding the reader for the second time (in parentheticals, no less) that she likes/loves sports a lot. She actually offers sound advice on baseball fundamentals and has a really cute way of telling Andrew not to sweat being too short to field his position, which is the first and quite possibly last piece of the book being accurate and nice.
The kids go back to playing and they still suck, so Kristy calls a softball clinic…which is kind of what she was already doing, but whatever. The kids are really into this idea and DM drops another hint at wanting to play in an organized league. Kristy encourages him and the other kids to go for it, but they all offer excuses against it: too young (Andrew), too female (Karen and Hannie), too crappy (Linny, DM, and Max).
Amanda says she doesn't care about baseball and Hannie throws shade back at her because apparently those two don't get along.
Amanda v. Hannie/Tatianna v. Tyra Sanchez, generational incarnations of the Great American Throwdown
Amanda proves her worth in the story for something other than being someone for Hannie to snark at. She brings up Bart Taylor to Kristy-a 13-year-old boy in the neighborhood who coaches a team called Bart's Bashers. DM jumps on the idea of joining the team and Kristy agrees to talk to him, even as she says she doesn't like the idea of talking to a boy.
I mean, I get her gist. She says half of boys her age are normal and the other half are jerks, and in her neighborhood, about both of either group are also snobs. Nearly 20 years later for me, and men haven't changed a damn bit.
She calculates the odds of Bart being a "regular, old nice guy" as 25%, opposed to the other 75% which contains plain jerks, plain snobs, and snobby jerks. There's a brief mention of what could be construed as class warfare between Kristy and her brothers attending public school versus the rest of the kids in her 'hood attending private school but ultimately it goes nowhere.
Krsity takes Shannon (the dog) out for a walk and sees "a very, very, very cute guy" in the Taylor's yard. Three very's from a girl who doesn't think about boys?
She assumes it's not Bart because rich people don't do their own yardwork. The story avoids veering into Desperate Housewives territory with the hot young thing working as the yard guy when Bart introduces himself to Kristy.
Although that might have been fun
Bart takes to Kristy right away. He likes her dog and he's looking at her as though she were a glamorous movie star. She thinks Bart is pretty hot, too, and she's all flustered about it. That's hella cute and reminds me of my awkward feelings around cute boys back in the day.
Kristy brings up the kids who want to play ball and Bart says he can't take on more players (especially not shitty players like those guys!) and in the narrative (rather than dialogue) they come up with the idea for Kristy to form her own team, which falls in line more with the "anyone can play" idea that I thought youth sports was built upon. She graciously promises to accept kids "no matter how…klutzy or uncoordinated." How nice.
Kristy decides to turn to Watson for help because he loves baseball and is good at organizing things. Oh and that she loves Bart Taylor.
Chapter 4
MA is baby-sitting for the Perkins girls. My incredible disbelief at the Amazing Perkins Sisters and their bag of astonishing tricks probably started in this book. The Perkins girls have committed many sins over the course of this book series: memorizing cookie dough recipes and baking them to perfection while teenage baby-sitters stand in awe, etc. But this is the book where Gabby Perkins, all of 2.5 years old, joins a softball team. Even with concessions that allow her to hit from a tee. That's fine. I just cannot at a kid who's that age and would actually be coordinated and motivated enough to swing a bat and want to play ball all on her own. I used to teach mommy and me swimming lessons and I had 2.5 year olds in my classes. Most of them couldn't even talk, much less figure out how to propel themselves in the water. But Gabby Perkins can do all this, and more! She's the miracle child.
I'm sorry, guys. I'll lay off that for a while. Just know that's one of my buttons in this book series.
So MA is at the Perkins' place and Jamie Newton and Nina Marshall show up. Chewy the dog is being annoying so MA puts him out in the yard. In the twenty seconds I assume this takes-because really, how long does it take to put the dog outside?-the kids have gone stir crazy. There's a collision and a minor spillage of water which exasperates MA so she suggests the kids go outside to play catch. Myriah knows better than all of us and objects to the idea of playing ball around Chewy, but MA chooses to keep him outside.
Myriah has the natural baseball instinct of Casey Stengel (a legendary manager for several Major League Baseball teams, most notably the New York Yankees) and immediately organizes a game with teams and everything. Jamie is afraid of the ball and ducks the first pitch he sees, which ends up in Chewy's mouth. The kids chase him around fruitlessly for a while before they give up and turn to the second batter, which is Gabby. They've chosen to toss a wiffle ball to her and Gabby gets a hit! Surprisingly she doesn't have the MLB Rulebook memorized so she doesn't know what to do after a hit and is tagged out at the plate by her own older sister.
The rest of the game goes similarly. Myriah is described as a pretty good player and when MA asks her about Little League, the other kids get excited about Kristy's fledgling team. The kids play ball through the end of the chapter and Chewy steals their balls (heh). There's no mention of the Walking Disaster yet, but I know it's coming in Chapter 5, which is in Part II!