SS#15 baby-sitter's european vacation part 3!
hey guys, how is everyone? sorry i've been slacking so hard lately! i'm still sick and in other fun news, i sprained a toe last week. a fucking toe. *rolls eyes forever* what makes it even more lame is i did it tripping over a BAG. it'd be comedic as fuck if it didn't hurt like a bitch. actually, it's still pretty funny.
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I had to Google the store, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, and one of the first things that pops up is that the store has a dress code. This makes me want to say two things: One, isn’t flying around Europe expensive enough without buying anything in a store so ‘special’ (snobby) that you can’t walk in wearing your own clothes (and another Google search tells me sweatshirts are about $50 and lamps are about $400 there, so my impression seems right), and Two, if Stacey’s situation is so desperate that she NEEDS to buy ANY new clothes, why not go to a store with reasonable prices (especially since she’ll probably get her suitcase back)?
She’s not Cinderella, Maureen; she might act like a princess, but your clothes won’t go up in a poof of smoke at midnight; she can borrow from her pack of friends (or buy from a thrift store if necessary) until her suitcase is returned and it won’t hurt her. You should be more worried about the poor man who has just opened a suitcase and found a bunch of size minus two Laura Ashley dresses (I’m just assuming spoiled brat Stacey packed like that) instead of all that’s left of his friend.
- Michel was snickering. “Don’t any of you have manners in public?” YES! SOMEONE FINALLY SAID IT! -
Finally! Finally! Finally! I need to get a copy of this book! lol
I get the feeling Stacey’s going to end up just like her mother, blowing $1500 on jewelry at one store and doing it at multiple stores just because she’s bored, and at no point will she realize that her divorce is essentially her fault, just as her mother’s was.
I can’t believe Stacey wanted twenty outfits. TWENTY. OUTFITS. Not just eight shirts and maybe six pairs of pants and a skirt or two, but twenty DESIGNER outfits.
And the exchange rate doesn’t surprise me at all. My fiancé sends child support to England every month, and what is five hundred pounds to the ex-wife (for ONE KID; luckily there’s only one!) is usually about a thousand dollars to us. Maybe Stacey doesn’t know about the exchange rate, but even if she didn’t, thinking she deserves twenty sets of brand-new clothes is absolutely mind-boggling. My ‘back-to-school’ shopping usually meant spending about ten dollars at the cheapest thrift shop, and we didn’t get to do that every year.
- We ended up buying two of the outfits . . . . arguing did no good. (Sigh.) I took what I could get. -
Does Stacey ever wear the same thing twice? -
What an absolutely entitled, spoiled brat she is. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she was exactly like Veronica Lodge in three or four years, constantly asking her parents for money, maxing out her credit cards, expecting a fancy car for her sixteenth birthday, and after wearing something just once, selling it to someone else. (I think Veronica actually had a store for the once-worn outfits she could no longer be seen in; I can see Stacey doing that and all her friends thinking, “She’s so smart and enterprising and fashionable!”)
- . . . As Maureen is writing all this down, Kristy walks into the room and peeks over Maureen’s shoulder like the rude little bitch she is -
This bothers me SO MUCH. It’s one of the reasons I hated Harry Potter’s ‘friends’; they were always right there, reading his letters, etc.- some things are NO ONE ELSE’S BUSINESS, and people who make things their business are crappy friends.
I’m SO glad my brain basically erased this book from my mind (to protect me, I’m sure). Stacey’s attitude towards the poor men who A.) were in a WAR and B.) died/just lost a friend is enough to make anyone feel like raging.
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- We looked into the rooms . . . papers were piled on the desks and maps still hung on the walls, covered with little flag markers, as if the war leaders had just stepped out for tea and were about to return. -
I got chills just reading that. I can’t imagine how it would feel in person.
- . . . and I thought about those ashes again . . . I wanted to give them to Mr. Anderson myself. -
Well, personally I’d want the little brat to give me back my whole suitcase with the ashes safely inside it, mostly for the illusion that she hadn’t been going through my underwear or staring at said ashes. Not to mention the poor man likely hasn’t been wearing Stacey’s clothes and might not even be able to afford to buy cheap temporary ones, so no doubt he wants his own clothes back.
Yet another day in which Stoneybrook’s weather changes suddenly - I can totally understand the weather not matching the forecast, but seriously, did no one look up or around and see clouds on the horizon? (Okay, to be fair, clouds can take less than a minute to form, but if it was already ‘overcast’ and ‘muggy’, they should have expected it.)
- . . . While Janine stands over them with her hands on her hips, yelling at Claud and telling her that papier-mâché isn’t an appropriate outdoor project. -
Well, it can be messy and people tend to do messy projects outside because they get yelled at for doing them inside, so I have to believe Janine’s just really stressed here; I have to find some excuse for this irrational behaviour.
- “Well, if it isn’t the Baby-sitters Club wet T-shirt contest. Not that anybody would notice.”
Claudia’s lame comeback to that is: “Stuff it, Cokie.”
Cokie fires back awesomely with, “I don’t have to.” -
I had no idea what that meant when I was a kid, lol; I thought Claudia was just telling Cokie to shut up and that Cokie’s reply was kind of lame in the same way a little kid saying “You’re not the boss of me!” would be. Things are so much better now that I know it’s all boob jokes, haha
Well, at least Cokie held up a ladder, girls; you guys just stared at playground equipment. Of the two, Cokie’s job sounds like it had more to do with safety.
The BSC also lost track of Claire while on the way to Sea City, and in Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies, Stacey (I think) loses track of not only her egg-baby, but Sari Papadakis (who is playing with the egg, because something that size isn’t at all a choking hazard and something Stacey should have been more careful of). That’s not to mention times the sitters just weren’t paying very close attention, leading to incidents like Jamie drawing all over his bedroom door, Joey Conklin watering the Prezzioso’s furniture with a garden hose, and Claire going missing in her own house, prompting everyone to have to search it for her (I guess they didn’t think of yelling for her, or she just didn’t answer if they did). And yeah, Nicky liked disappearing in one book, and Jake and Buddy both had ‘scary’ disappearances, too.
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I could see Janine and Claudia now, racing toward me.
“Help me!” I shouted.
“Stop!” Mathew yelled. -
This bothers me, because one sitter should be more than enough to deal with one little brat. And instead of calling for reinforcements, Mary Anne should squeeze the kid a little harder, remind him that he’s just a kid, and that he has to listen to those in charge (he didn’t listen to his own counsellor, so he can’t whine now that Mary Anne’s not his), and maybe threaten to tell his mother he’s too disobedient to be away from her. Or at least tell him that lightning is deadly. Anything other than essentially proving that she can’t handle a six-year-old.
- ‘Besides, Mr. Brailsford has assured me the spot would be open if I ever wanted to return. I planned to take him up on it someday.’ Of course he did. Funny how even though she said ‘no’, she still has an automatic ‘in’ if she ever changes her mind. That only ever happens to BSC members. -
No, no, NO, NO - just no. I don’t know how special this dance company supposedly is, but if it performs around the world, the odds are good it’s far better than Madame Noelle’s class. And I was just saying in my response to your first post on this book that the company probably doesn’t just stand there holding out invitations, not knowing how dedicated you still are or whether you’ve stopped dancing or whether your body’s changed so much that you “can’t” dance anymore.
Just once, I’d like to see these girls hit with reality. For Jessi to have said ‘No’, fully aware that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, because there’s no way an eleven-year-old who takes two classes a week and just started dancing on toe should be dancing in a foreign country. For there to be no fantastic safety net for when she decides to prove she’s committed and deserves to be part of Dance NY (’cause really, wouldn’t a serious dance company hear that a kid would rather baby-sit and yap on the phone withdraw their invitation, realizing she’s not serious enough about dancing?).
How realistic is it that the BSC was allowed to take off and see a ballet? Who paid for the tickets? Which poor teacher had to tell other interested kids “Sorry, BSC members only!” and then take said disappointed kids somewhere else? Is there no structure to this trip; nothing educational planned for everyone? What happened to the other school? Was the shoe-finding game the extent of the interactions? (No wonder Jessi didn’t want to tell her dancer friend exactly what they had to study about Canada, lol).
- The chapter ends with Mr. Brailsford lifting Jessi up in his arms backstage -
I don’t want to be one of those people, but just for a moment, I’m going to be - you can’t do that. You can’t pick up kids you don’t know. You shouldn’t even pick up kids you DO know unless you’re pretty close to their parents, and you especially shouldn’t touch a kid unless their parents are right there. These days, people jump to life-ruining conclusions so quickly, it’s almost not even ABOUT kids anymore; it’s about navigating through the mess of unwritten rules.
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