#98: Dawn and Too Many Sitters, Chapters 1-3
I’m cursing myself for having gotten rid of so many of these when I moved out of my parents’ house. Once upon a time, my bookshelves were a veritable rainbow of pastel spines and Hodges’s Uncanny Valley landscapes. Now the only ones I can find are Jessi’s Wish and the clusterfuck du jour: Dawn and Too Many Sitters.
That said, this should be good fun: I do love the later books. Partially for the utter caricatures all the girls had devolved into (hear that? that’s Mary Anne bursting into tears at this grave, grave insult), and partially for the introduction of Abby, by far my favorite Baby-Sitter.
Speaking of caricatures, the extended Scientology metaphor so brilliantly applied by this community has given me an idea. In the meatworld, I am a religion student (academic theory of - it’s not seminary or anything), and one of my specialties is cult dynamics. For the purposes of this snark, I shall employ a Friendly Neighborhood Cult Watch, to be engaged at my discretion when I feel K. Ron should be kept on her toes. (Plus, I like showing off ‘n’ stuff. Knowledge is sexy.)
Hurr ya go, my lovely Suppressive Persons.
Cover! As usual, Claudia’s room is not only hopelessly inconsistent but downright matronly. There's a couple of paintings (I shit you not, one of them looks EXACTLY like something I did in preschool, right down to the specific color palate), and a director’s chair, but the walls are still white, and her bed resembles a cot draped in a pilfered motel spread. Honey, if you’re going to that length, it’s okay to charge more than peanuts for your childcare services. (I’m not even joking. I think they might literally be paid in peanuts.)
That said, everyone looks more or less realistic. Kristy’s bitchface is spot on; I feel like Avriel Hillman might’ve been cast for the videos based on this very book cover. Except for Jeff, who vaguely resembles a fifteen-year-old Hitler Youth, the boys actually look their age. The kid on the right reminds me of a guy I briefly dated, who is not worth mentioning except that he wrote me erotica for my birthday that year, which I thought was awesome even though he kind of misjudged my kinks in it. Maybe that kid (I’m guessing it’s Jordan, ‘cause the quiet one on the bed has to be Byron and Mr. My Mouth Could House a Small Country is too uncouth not to be Adam) will grow up to pen erotica for the starving housewives of Stoneybrook. A sort of literary camgirl, no doubt bedecked in land’s finest neckbeard. BSC # 227: Mallory Discovers Her Internet Cyrano Is Actually Her Little Brother.
Now I want to write a fanfic describing the Stoneybrook boys’ pubescence and what kind of facial hair they’ll ultimately cultivate. I grew up around Greeks, and I’d bet money Linny Papadakis will have one of those goatees with a little curl. (Also, I can no longer think of the Papadakises without thinking of Middlesex, because that is EXACTLY the kind of scandal Stoneybrook needs.)
Back cover: “As Baby-sitters-in-Training, the boys are happy to eat junk food at meetings and play around with the little kids. But they don’t want to change diapers, or miss Little League, or listen when Kristy calls meetings to order.”
Why should they have to change diapers? It’s not like they’ll be watching many babies anyway, because they’re, you know, TEN YEARS OLD. And why exactly should they have to miss Little League? Isn’t the point of a multi-member club to schedule appointments around people’s prior commitments? Jessi doesn’t miss dance recitals to sit for Becca and Squirt. K. Ron, the Friendly Neighborhood Cult Watch (FNCW) is side-eyeing you so hard right now.
FNCW: 1
K.Ron: 0
Chapter 1
We open on Dawn’s last weekend in California; she’s almost finished her finals (who had those in eighth grade? Anyone?), and she’ll soon be jetting off to Stoneybrook for the summer. Problem is, she can’t manage to finish her “summer plans” essay, which was assigned over the last weekend of the school year (Dawn bitches about it, and I’ve gotta say I agree) and is somehow worth stressing about, because it’s not like your grade is 99% finalized by that point anyway. Dawn, your teacher knows you’re getting nothing out of this. He'd just rather you waited 'til high school for alcohol poisoning.
In the throes of boredom, Dawn segues into describing herself and everything around her. “I do not eat red meat,” she exposits. A few contractions never hurt anyone, Dawn. Right now you’re talking like Karen, and my stomach is plummeting to imagine Karen going all ACTIVIST!1!!1!!!! in a few years. You just know she’d drag Boo-Boo out of his feline retirement every time she needed a poster kitten. I’m officially setting up a Ricky Torres Relief Fund. (“Those condoms had better not be LAMBSKIN!!!1!!!11!”)
Dawn martyrs a little about how her Stoneybrook friends tease her for her beliefs, but she doesn’t care. Um. I think maybe you do care. See, you still flinch when I even mention Mrs. Gonzalez. Also, point of order: it is your ATTITUDE, not your beliefs, in question here. Healthy eating is hardly a “belief”; pollution, even less so. No one is disputing the merits of a balanced diet or claiming acid rain doesn’t exist, they’d just rather you didn’t ruin their grandmother’s priceless fur with jank-ass red paint.
Dawn claims her California friends are “right in [her] corner”, even though Maggie wears leather and dyes her hair every shade of fluorescent. Cow: evil in your stomach, hip as fuck on your back. Glad we’ve cleared that up.
On the W♥KC and how they survived their overscheduling crisis: “We established one central phone number (Sunny’s), regular meeting hours, and good record keeping.” Um. What the fuck kind of club was this before, without regular meetings or even a goddamn phone number? What’s least believable about that is that they actually had enough business to be overscheduled.
And you know, Dawn, it is California and your mother is Sharon Emerson Porter; you don’t have to keep pretending your laziness has anything to do with being “laid-back”.
Chapter 2
“‘How would I know where your shorts are? They’re too big and ugly for me!’”
‘Nothing’s too big and ugly for you!’”
Dawn and Jeff must’ve forgotten their happy pills this morning (California Casual slipping away already?), because they’re behaving more or less as siblings actually behave. I love moments like this. I think I went around repeating “nothing’s too big and ugly for you!” under my breath for a good few weeks after first reading this book.
“‘Yo, chill!’ Carol called out from downstairs. (She’s in her thirties, but she tries to sound young.)” First of all, didn’t Dawn make a big deal back in #5 about Mrs. Barrett being “only thirty-three years old”? Carol’s not exactly menopausal. Second, I have never in my life heard the words “yo” and “chill” unironically escape the mouth of anyone under 30. Given Ann’s frame of reference, though, they’re probably as harsh on her virgin ears as “motherfucking shitdicks”.
One of the Schafers’ breakfast options is “cold puffed millet cereal in mango-kiwi juice”. Is this a thing the Schafers are into? In #23, Dawn runs out of milk for her cereal and wonders if she can substitute orange juice. Cereal in juice sounds nasty as all get out. Milk is a pretty neutral flavor, and as such makes a good backdrop for cereal; juice adds elements of its own and seems like it would clash more than Claudia’s coming-out dress. (…anyone? I guess I’ll show myself out.)
Dawn gets a B-minus on her “summer plans” essay. I can’t figure out whose failure is more pronounced here: Dawn’s, for sucking even at bullshitting, or Mr. Swanson's, for being such a stickler over the last weekend of the year and not just giving everybody an A.
Answer: Ann, for thinking a teacher would actually be grading over the (let’s reiterate) LAST WEEKEND OF THE YEAR instead of mailing out the grades sometime in mid-August.
“‘I have to admit, after all my long bicoastal visits, I have become used to big farewell parties.’” Sweetie, you’re going to lead a very disappointing life if you get too used to this. First of all, she’s defining “long” as “lasting two weeks or more”, which is barely enough time to sleep off the jet lag. If you expect pin-the-tail-on-the-humanely-raised-donkey with all the neighborhood kids every time you go away for two weeks, I hope you never go to college. Or, at least, I hope you develop a taste for booze so you can get hammered like any normal person instead of inviting random children to the dorm every time one of your friends studies abroad.
“Listen, this is important! Jamie Newton came all the way from Stoneybrook!”
“Dawn, I hope to God that Jamie Newton is a kind of bourbon.”
Carol starts sobbing over breakfast, and I hope it’s just her time of the month, because she’s known Dawn and Jeff for less than a year and they’re about to spend the summer with the mother they haven’t seen in months, so it’s not her damn place to make them feel guilty. I really hate this, both in books and in real life: raining (pun intended) on someone’s parade because you’ll miss them *sob sob* SOOOO much. ESPECIALLY an adult doing so to a kid. Carol, do you want to make Dawn and Jeff feel like they can never leave home without emotionally shredding you? Because that is what you are doing.
Of course Dawn starts bawling too, and Jeff snarks at them. Jeff. I like Jeff. Though it bothers me that his aversion to the maudlin is presented as something ten-year-old boys invariably grow out of, instead of, you know, a psychologically healthy way to live your life.
On the plane, Dawn falls asleep and dreams that Abby resents her return and the club is divided about letting her back in. That’s a pretty legitimate thirteen-year-old fear (oh, who am I kidding; it’s legitimate at any age), but the form it takes troubles me. Dawn’s afraid not that her friends don’t like her anymore, but that they’ll kick her out of the club. And, of course, once you’re out of the club, there’s no being casual friends with its members. All or Nothing. As Persons go, Dawn is pretty Suppressive (Spirit Month, anyone?), but even she doesn’t deserve that.
FNCW: 2
K.Ron: 0
Of course Dawn’s fears melt away once she sees her family and experiences Mary Anne’s ladyboner sisterly love. They all sob some more (except for Richard and Jeff, of course). I feel like this book is trying to say some uncomfortably archaic things about gender, and now I’m afraid my uterine privileges will be revoked because I don’t burst into tears at every goddamn thing.
Chapter 3
Jeff rouses Dawn for breakfast at 8:15 in the morning, explaining that Richard won’t serve unless they’re all in the kitchen. RICHARD. They got in LAST NIGHT from CALIFORNIA. Dawn’s breakfast will be just fine in the fridge for a few hours while her body gets used to the time change.
These girls assign pathology to all the wrong things. Didn’t Dawn once snot for an entire book about Richard’s personal habits, right down to his method of sock organization? I agree that he’s a raging obsessive-compulsive, but not because he likes his belongings neat - because he’s so invested in the idea of a perfect family breakfast that he’ll rouse his stepdaughter at what her body thinks is 5:15 am.
I like Richard, though, and I want to hope he recognizes his problem and is doing something about it. Maybe he married Sharon for her dispensary pass.
Dawn drags herself out of bed still fretting about her dream on the plane. Dammit, Ann, you said explicitly in the last chapter that seeing Mary Anne freed her of the worry! That said, I wouldn’t put it past Mary Anne to have planted some passive-aggressive anxiety seed in Dawn’s head before she fell asleep.
I thought maybe we could get past the exposition for once in this damn series, but nooo, it just came in Chapter 3 instead of Chapter 2. Kristy is the “loudest - I mean, most outgoing” member of the club. Oh man, I’d forgotten how much I love subtle Dawn burns. Apparently Stacey’s style is “classy, sleek, urban”. How exactly do jellies and jumpsuits fit into that, Anastasia?
Mallory and Jessi have read “every horse book ever written”. You don’t get to say that unless you’re an active member of r/spaceclop. (LINK VERY VERY NSFW)
“I told Mary Anne all the gory details and asked if it was true, if the BSC really did want to kick me out.’
‘Kick you out?’ she said with a smile. ‘Everyone wants to force you to stay! Kristy thinks we should make an official declaration of kidnapping to your dad.’
I burst out laughing. Out of relief, mostly, but also because I could picture Kristy Thomas doing that.”
FNCW: >9,000
K.Ron: -27