#52: Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies
For my third snark, I had to go right for the jugular - a book so horrendous that it redefines “judging a book by its cover.” First of all, as a professional editor, a writer, a linguaphile, and a human being, the title offends me to my very core. I hope whoever at Scholastic approved it was fired and then shot for good measure. Second, the cover - I dare you to look directly at Boy Baby and not feel a piece of your soul being sucked away. It looks like Buddy Hackett’s face pasted onto an infant’s body.
The beginning of this book is incredibly boring, as Mary Anne starts the exposition on the very first page: Mom’s dead, Dad’s strict, little girl braids, loosened up, high school sweetheart, blah blah. Ms. Martin, a word of advice - a “hook.” Try one. You’ll find more readers will be able make it past the second page without stopping to mix themselves a screwdriver, which is always favorable when your target audience is in the third grade.
“Dawn?” Mary Anne wants to know, once she’s finished explaining who Dawn is. “How come the hedge clippers are in the bread drawer?” I want to know what Sharon’s smoking, where I can get some, and if it goes well with orange juice and vodka. “Disorganized” is one thing; “completely cracked out” is another. I love the way Dawn shrugs all, “Probably Mom,” like it COULD be Sharon, or maybe it’s the Hedge Clipper Fairy. Mary Anne lets us all know that “a few months ago, I might have freaked out if I found hedge clippers in the bread drawer. Now I can handle the situation calmly.” ...I’m sorry, the “situation”? The hell? “Hi, Dad, I - oh my god. There are hedge clippers in the bread drawer. Oh my god. What do I do?...Okay, towels and boiling water, got it. Yes, please come home as soon as possible.” I’d probably start smoking drugs too, if I had to live with that level of high-strung.
While they have their snack - cookies for Mary Anne, hamster cage lining for Dawn - they start discussing how dibbly fresh it would be if their parents had a baby, and how it wouldn’t be any work for Richard and Sharon or anything, because they would take care of it themselves. Guys, I think the word you’re looking for here is “puppy.” They segue into how crap it is that they have to take a Modern Living class and learn all about marriage and finances and stuff. I kind of agree here; not that it’s not important stuff, but I don’t think that the things you learn about adult life in a classroom in the eighth grade are going to bear much resemblance to the real deal. Nor are you really going to remember it when it matters; it’s not like you’re 25, holding your own child for the first time, and then you carefully apply the practice you put in with a refrigerated good twelve years ago. Dawn, being annoying as always, wants to know why only eighth graders have to submit to this torture and not sixth and seventh graders too. Because it’s not as though sixth and seventh graders will eventually make it to eighth grade or anything. (“God! Why do I have to learn calculus and the kindergarteners don’t?”) I don’t feel like Dawn is going to fare well in the real world.
Chapter 2! (Alternate title: Zzzzzzz.) In case you were wondering, “a typical Claudia outfit might include a sequined shirt, stirrup pants (maybe black), low black boots, dangly turquoise earrings, and ribbons woven through tiny braids in her hair. And she wouldn’t forget the sparkly nail polish.” Yes, we get a description of Claudia’s clothes, with no fewer than nine detailed adjectives, for an outfit she IS NOT ACTUALLY WEARING. I think they all picture Claudia in their mind’s eye a little too much.
“Another thing about Claud,” Mary Anne lets us know, “She’s a terrible student. She could be a good one if she tried, but school just doesn’t interest her.” I hate the way they all make disclaimers about how Claudia isn’t dumb; she just doesn’t try. I knew kids like that, who were completely brilliant but cut a lot of school and slept in class and didn’t show up for tests. Claudia is not that student. Offhand, I can think of at least six books where she has to study for something or is being tutored by her family or whatever and she’s STILL a dunce. She may not enjoy school, but she actually tries really hard and she still makes shitty grades, so let’s stop deluding ourselves, guys.
The rest of chapter two is a snoozefest as always. Per standard second chapter outline, everyone rushes in to a meeting and gets described in turn, the BSC is described as the meeting occurs, either a new client or a special sitting gig is called in, and the narrator gets the job - in this case, it’s Mrs. Salem, the mother of infant twins, lining up a job with Mary Anne. It’s nice to know that some things will never change. Incidentally, there is not enough vodka in my drink.
Chapter 3! “Do you, Mary Anne Spier, take this man to be your husband?” Oh, NICE, Mary Anne finally got knocked up and Richard’s making her - oh, damn. It’s just the fake wedding in their Modern Living class. After the wedding, the teacher tells them that they’re all “biologically capable of becoming parents” (racy talk for a BSC book) and wants to know how many of them think they could handle it, and Mary Anne totally raises her hand. She’s going to be so embarrassed about that. I always felt like an asshole years later, remembering how grown-up I (incorrectly) thought I was at the time. She further makes a dick of things by saying that she knows she and Logan are ready to take “the big step” of marriage, and it really sounds creepy, because I don’t think she’s just talking about the class anymore. Some unidentified classmate who I am now in love with mumbles, “Like getting married to someone you see three times a week is realistic.” THANK YOU, ONLY SANE MEMBER OF THE CLASS. This is what I mean; you can’t learn to live and parent and make financial decisions together with someone you don’t even know. Love may not be everything, but it can damn well matters when you’re making a life for yourselves together. Also: nice norm reinforcement there, SMS. Don’t teach people how to pay rent and fend for themselves and maybe even - gasp! - be parents if they’re not married, which they probably won’t be when they first enter the real world and will need these lessons the most. Everything about this class is pointless.
Then again, some of them might really need this, because Shawna Riverson - if you’ll recall, a girl so stupid she actually cheated off of CLAUDIA - thinks that marriage really 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.” Some people don’t HAVE maps. And such.
Mary Anne, who raises her hand because she can’t possibly sound any stupider than that (no, she actually says that), says that marriage means commitment and trying to work things out when you have problems. So I guess she doesn’t really think that she and Logan are ready for the Big Step, seeing as how she eventually dumps him not once but twice. There’s some stuff about there not being enough girls to go around (shockingly, Logan does not volunteer to marry one of the leftover dudes) and it’s bizarre, because Logan suggests that the paired guys not actually decide who’s the husband and who’s the wife, and the teacher says it’s okay, “in that tone that teachers 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? I don’t...wait, WHAT? Nice way to enforce stereotypical gender norms, Sexist Teacher. Two guys have to pair up, so automatically one has to be the man and one has to be the woman? Is one of them going to have to wring their hands, spontaneously fall pregnant, and then make a quiche? I mean, their assignment is to figure out how to pay the rent; why the hell couldn’t that be two male roommates, if it matters so damn much? She creepily adds that they “may be asked to be couples outside of class,” and that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. This teacher sucks.
Mary Anne and Logan meet after school to start scouting for living arrangements, and they simultaneously crap themselves when all the apartments are eight hundred to two thousand dollars a month. Welcome to adulthood! They start adding and realize that together, they don’t make enough in a year to afford a single month’s rent. Thus, fatal flaw number two of this Modern Stupidity class: don’t they normally assign you some fictional jobs and income to work with? I mean, no eighth-grader is financially solvent, so if they only have their own money, what’s the point of this class? “Well, we can’t afford anything. Homework’s done.” That’s not actually how you learn to budget, Idiot Sexist Teacher.
Instead of giving up on the grounds of this assignment being really, really dumb, Mary Anne and Logan press on by deciding that they’ll live at home, then have an argument over whose house they’ll live in. Logan doesn’t want to live at the Spier’s because Richard will “watch him all the time,” and Mary Anne doesn’t want to live with her nine-year-old sister in law and her five-year-old brother-in-law. “Anyway,” she adds, “I want us to have our own place. I want to hang curtains and paint cupboards.” Mary Anne, sweetie. It’s fake. Even if you had your own (fictional) home, you don’t actually get to decorate it. This is where the real storyline starts, because the rest of this book should be entitled “Mary Anne and the Students Who Take a Fictional Assignment Way 2 Seriously.” They eventually decide to live at Mary Anne’s, even though “Logan would be embarrassed to admit he’d be living in a girl’s bedroom.” Right, a guy who can’t handle PRETENDING to live in a girl’s room is certainly ready for marriage.
Mary Anne’s off to her sitting job at the Salem’s, and poor Mrs. Salem is a walking zombie. When Mary Anne asks what’s wrong, Mrs. Salem’s like, “Um, I have twin infants, genius.” Mary Anne is dismissive, though, because the BSC once sat for fourteen kids for a whole week and she’s sat for the Pikes loads of times. Mary Anne is in for a cold hard dose of reality pretty soon, I think. She looks over her Modern Stupidity notes while the twins are sleeping and notes that parenting isn’t a big deal. “If everyone would just take a child care course, they’d be prepared.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I know that the eventual moral of this tale is that Mary Anne finds out what hard work parenting actually is, but I can’t believe someone could make it all the way to the eighth grade and be so stupid.
When the twins wake up, she changes their diapers and carries them to the kitchen one at a time. I know that a 13-year-old might not be that strong, but honestly. One in each arm. Or one in your arms, one in a sling. Or put them in their punkin seats and carry them that way. Do you really think that Mrs. Salem wanders around all day transporting them one at a time? (My in-laws have twin babies and I’ve seen them get creative.) Other than that, the twins are angels and actually sound quite adorable. Mary Anne gushes about them to Dawn when she gets home and they start talking again about how Richard and Sharon should have a baby. They start talking about how fun it would be to dress up a little sister and what they would name her. Guys. I think the word you’re looking for is “doll.” Hilariously, Richard and Sharon come home and bust them, and Dawn says, “We have noticed a pattern. People get married, and then they have babies.” Oh dear. Sharon’s all, “Yeah, we did that once before, remember? With you two?” Mary Anne wants to know if they want to have a baby together, and Richard's like, “...No. And now I’m going to go have a vasectomy just to shut you up.” They stop talking, but the fact that Richard and Sharon have definitively said they do not want another child does nothing to stop Mary Anne from mentally choosing names for her imaginary little sister. I think Mary Anne has suffered a head injury, because she lists Tara four times.
Mary Anne and Logan don’t know what to say in Modern Stupidity the next day, because they think “‘we can’t afford anything’ is not what Mrs. Boyden wants to hear.” Um...I reiterate, THEY ARE THIRTEEN GODDAMN YEARS OLD. What the bloody fuck is she EXPECTING to hear? “With my allowance and his paper route, we have secured ourselves a summer home in Maine”? Because they are brown nosers, they make graphs showing how much apartments cost and how much they should be making if they want one, instead of telling Mrs. Boyden what a waste of school funds this entire endeavor is.
When they show up in class, the teacher has an open carton of eggs on her desk, and Mary Anne nervously whispers to Logan, “Do you think Mrs. Boyden is angry at our class? Did we do something wrong?” What? Does she think the teacher is going to THROW the eggs at them or something? This class just took a turn for the awesome. Sadly, though, she just hands them out and tells them that the eggs are now their babies. She says, “Your babies must be fed regularly, clothed, taken to the doctor, and especially, watched over,” and lets them know that they are on the honor system to do this at all times. Shawna wants to know if they actually have to take the egg to the doctor, and Mrs. Boyden acts like this is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. Except that it’s kind of not, because I’m confused as to how you pretend to take an egg to the doctor. Are they supposed to be sitting in their bedrooms after school, holding an imaginary conversation with an imaginary pediatrician? And they’re on the HONOR SYSTEM to actually do this? Do you think that Mrs. Boyden and Sharon are meeting out behind the football bleachers after school to toke up? Cite examples.
She goes on to say that they don’t actually have to prepare food and pretend to feed the egg either, but they do have to be with the egg at mealtimes, because a baby can’t feed itself, and they have to hold it, because a baby can’t sit up by itself, and I honestly do not understand this assignment. What DO they have to do? Hold the egg and stare at it to simulate the time they would be spending feeding it? Hold the egg and stare at it to simulate the time they would be spending dressing it? Hold the egg and stare at it to simulate the time they would be spending changing diapers? How, exactly, is this preparing them for anything involving real life? This is truly the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Logan is freaking out for no particular reason and says that they can’t carry it around all day. Mary Anne’s like, “But we have to,” and he says he’ll put it in his backpack. Mary Anne thinks it’ll be safer in her purse, and Logan worries that it’ll suffocate in there. The hell, does he want to buy it a stroller or something? Logan. IT IS AN EGG. GET A GRIP. During gym, the sane girls just toss their eggs on the floor, but Mary Anne is careful to put hers where she can see it and worries that no one will be able to tell their babies apart. Because real parents certainly would just grab the wrong baby out of a lineup. At lunch, Mary Anne and Logan meet up and Mary Anne says, “Look, I’m sure she’s hungry by now. Why don’t you eat while I feed her? Then I’ll eat while you finish feeding her. We should probably feed her again at...” This is a descent into madness.
It turns out Kristy and Alan Gray have been paired up in their Modern Stupidity class, and they are model parents, by which I mean creepy parents, to their egg Izzy. They read to him and play him music and put up little pictures in his box to stimulate him. Guys. IT IS AN EGG. GET A GRIP. Alan gets all dreamy about fatherhood, which is completely realistic for a boy in middle school who still makes fart jokes. When Kristy takes Izzy to her sitting job at the Papadakises, she tries to explain the egg-baby project to them, and they are really creeped out. As well they should be. More so when Alan actually calls to find out how Izzy is (he was “just thinking about” him) and they discuss the goddamn egg as if it were a real person: Alan thinks Kristy should feed him more, Kristy says that he’s napping now and that he was very shy when she first got to the Papadakises, Alan thinks he isn’t socializing enough. I would type out the dialogue, but it is so frightening that I prefer to pretend I dreamed up this entire exchange. They talk for “quite awhile,” and I’m sure the Papadakises will be thrilled to discover how much time the baby-sitter spent on their phone making up a personality for a food item.
It turns out that Kristy isn’t Wonder Mom after all, because by the time she gets off the phone, she’s lost track of her fake child AND her very real sitting charges. It turns out they took Izzy with them to the playroom and promptly lost him, and Hannie and Linny make a lot of annoying but kind of clever egg-related puns while Kristy freaks out. She tears up the playroom looking for him and finally realizes that Sari has him, and like, nice job she must be doing watching the REAL baby given how long it takes Kristy to notice that she’s sitting there playing with an egg.
Mary Anne and Logan have finally settled on naming their egg Sammie after arguing about it for four days...four days to name an egg? IT’S AN EGG. CALL IT “EGG” FOR ALL IT MATTERS. They make her a little wicker basket to travel in, and Logan is apparently “a model father.” Right. If this were realistic, all the boys would have been out on the baseball diamond blowing up their children with bottle rockets on the first day. Unfortunately, Mary Anne’s got to take Sammie on her sitting job with the Salem twins, because Logan is taking his siblings to the playground and he doesn’t want her to get too much sun. That’s kind of realistic, actually; that sucker would rot pretty quickly outside.
And awesomely, the whole job goes to shit as the twins are screaming and Mary Anne can’t juggle them AND Sammie, and she totally neglects them to carry around her fucking egg and makes them hold their own bottles so she can “feed” Sammie and there’s lots more screaming. I would be SO FUCKING PISSED if I found out that the baby-sitter wasn’t giving her full attention to my infants so she could pretend to feed an egg. I also am completely bewildered as to who is honestly such a goody-goody as to make her own life so difficult for the sake of the “honor system.” Any sane person would have chucked that thing aside the minute the babies started crying. Of course, as she discusses the job with Dawn later, she dismisses the scenario as “unrealistic” because she wouldn’t normally be watching three infants at once. Uh-huh. It’s not as though Mrs. Pike would have had four infants at once or anything. This nightmare does not stale them on wanting a baby sister one bit, as they go through a catalog of baby stuff picking out the things they like. I do that sort of thing all the time, but see, the difference is I understand that I’m just having fun picking out hypothetical items. They actually THINK they’re getting these things, and when Richard catches them again he’s all, “The hell? How many times do I have to tell you bitches we’re not having a baby?”
The next day at the BSC meeting, Stacey, Mary Anne, and Kristy all have their babies with them at the meeting, and they set them all on the dresser with pillows around them in case they fall. Um, they’re in a mixing bowl, a basket, and a box, where the hell do you think they’re going to go? THEY ARE EGGS. Although as we find out later, the eggs are obviously sentient and attempting to flee their horrible horrible parents, so perhaps there’s something to this. (Also, interestingly, Claudia’s egg-baby is with his father, but no mention is made of Dawn’s baby. Is she even IN this class, when she was the one bitching about it to begin with? She is SUCH a whiner.)
Mary Anne actually starts crying because she thinks Logan is hogging the baby, and Stacey is the lone voice of sanity by rolling her eyes and pointing out that it’s a goddamn egg, and not much fun to take care of, at that. I knew there was a reason she’s my favorite. Jessi solemnly asks what it’s like being married, and BAHAHAHAHA. They say they have to communicate and agree and trust each other, and Jessi joins Stacey on the sane side by pointing out that none of them love their “husbands” and that probably makes a difference. Mary Anne’s like, “I do love him! And the marriage still sucks.” So maybe they ARE learning something from this little experiment. Just then Logan calls to have a creepy conversation like Kristy and Alan’s, where he nags Mary Anne to feed Sammie and keep her warm and stuff. You know he’s taking things too seriously when he risks Kristy’s wrath by tying up the phone line during a meeting. Mallory thinks they’re getting off easy, because she knows firsthand how hard it is for a mother to deal with a baby, but Mary Anne thinks to herself that Richard and Sharon will have it so much easier because she and Dawn will do all the work. My GOD, this girl is deluded.
Stacey’s the next one to take her egg-baby on a sitting job, and doesn’t fare much better than Kristy, as Alicia Gianelli is terrified of eggs. It’s hilarious; Stacey’s all, “LOOK AT MY BABY!” and Alicia flips the hell out. Bobby Gianelli just thinks it’s weird and is none too pleased to have the same name as Stacey’s egg. There’s a stupid “who’s on first” bit about Bobby the kid and Bobby the egg, and finally Stacey has to call Austin Bentley, her husband, to come get the egg. She ends up realizing how hard it must be to be a single parent and not have anyone to call and help you, and decides she isn’t going to have a real baby for a long, long time. You know, stupid and weird though this book is most of the time, it’s actually got a pretty good, realistic message.
Mary Anne opens chapter 10 whining about how she and Logan hasn’t had any time together since the baby, and she supposes that they COULD have taken Sammie with them to Pizza Express or the coffee place or something, but “it just didn’t seem like a great idea.” Uh, why not? IT’S AN EGG. I know the idea is that real parents don’t get much time together, but she says that they would have had to hold Sammie and feed her and stuff, and it would have “defeated the purpose” of going out. You can’t talk to someone with an egg in your hand? This doesn’t even make sense anymore. Furthermore, I love the fact that they’re in the Baby-Sitters Club and it never once occurs to them to get a baby-sitter. Seriously, drop the thing off with Kristy for a little while and say that Sammie and Izzy are having a play date. Unlike real children, it’s not actually harder to watch two eggs than one, so I don’t see the problem here.
So she gets all excited when Logan asks her to go to a movie (because she actually thinks that Logan cares more about Sammie than her, and I think maybe it’s time to end a relationship when you feel that your partner feels more strongly about a refrigerated item than you). Only Logan thinks she’s getting a baby-sitter for Sammie and she doesn’t. He’s all, “We can’t bring a baby to a movie!” Um. See, the reason babies are not a good idea at movies is because they cry and disturb other people. I think maybe your egg has not evolved that function yet. Then again, since they randomly make up when she’s sleeping and when she’s hungry and all that, he’d probably just jump up suddenly during the movie and yell, “Sorry, baby’s crying! I have to take her out!” And then they would put him away in a nice padded room for a little while, just like Sammie’s.
Mary Anne finally convinces him that it’ll be okay, and they spend a fortune on popcorn and sodas and they can’t carry it all with Sammie and the twelve extra sweaters Mary Anne’s brought along for no apparent reason. Jesus. Sling the sweaters over one arm. Sling the basket over the other. Popcorn in left hand. Soda in right. It’s like they go looking for problems, it really is. Then they can’t find enough space for everything, and Mary Anne smushes Sammie in a seat and Logan and I are both, “Just HOLD her, god!” but she whines that she can’t eat that way and plops Sammie and the sweaters in a third seat. A guy comes by and pointedly asks if the seat is taken, and thank you, random man. Pet peeve of mine. If you want three seats, then buy three goddamn tickets. They reconfigure again so Mary Anne’s sitting on her sweaters - why did she bring them if she wasn’t going to wear them? - and holding Sammie, but now she can’t reach her food because it’s on the floor. Oh my GOD, Mary Anne. Soda in the cupholder. Popcorn on your right leg. Basket on your left. How can this POSSIBLY be so difficult? She wants to put Sammie on the floor while she eats and Logan objects, but she says she’ll put Sammie right between her feet so she’ll know if anyone takes the basket. Because kidnappers often trawl movie theaters looking for eggs to snatch. Pretty soon she feels around the basket and Sammie isn’t in it anymore and she flips out. IT’S AN EGG. How the hell could it disappear from a stationary basket? Logan calls over an usher to shine around his flashlight and it turns out Sammie is just rolling around under the seat. I used to work in a movie theater and I think I would have clubbed you with my flashlight if you asked me to come look for your missing pretend child in the middle of a movie. As it is, the guy next to them is really pissed and finally Logan’s like, “WE’RE LEAVING,” and drags Mary Anne out in the middle of the show. That Logan and his iron chains of love are scary controlling. They have a fight in the lobby about who’s taking the baby - because Mary Anne is a terrible mother for losing their child and the father sitting six inches away holds no responsibility - and I throw the book across the room and pour myself a third drink.
Chapter 11: The Pike kids decide they want egg babies too and predictably use up a whole carton. Apparently, “the Pike kids can make anything fun.” That is all I have to say about that. (Oh, and Dawn does have an egg. His name is Skip. She is a snotty bitch about how she hates the name Skip. I hate Dawn.)
Chapter 12! Shawna Riverson wants a divorce. (She doesn’t know her marriage isn’t real because they didn’t have a plastic wedding bell, because no one knows what a plastic wedding bell is.) She’s pissed that her husband is a deadbeat and she has to take all the responsibility for their nameless egg. She complains that she was late for school because she forgot the egg and had to run all the way home for it, and while Deadbeat Husband gives his side of the story, Mary Anne thinks, “Shawna and Miles had not named their egg. They didn’t want to be bothered with it..Yet Shawna did treat the egg as her baby. If she’d been totally disinterested, she could have left her baby at home when she realized what she’d done. But she went back for it. I was amazed at how real our children had become to us.” Right, because REAL parents totally think, “Oh, shit, I left the oven on! And something else...oh, yeah, I left the kid behind too.” Here’s an idea, Mary Anne: Maybe she went back for the damn egg so she wouldn’t get in trouble for not having it; not because she actually gives a shit. And honestly, why should she? They’re THIRTEEN, for the hundred-thousandth time. There is no shame in not being interested in parenthood before you can drive. There’s no shame in not being interested in parenthood at all, come to that, but it seems especially stupid to expect a teenager to take being a mother seriously when you would just look down on her if she got knocked up for real.
Shawna and Miles continue pissing at each other in dramatic new parent fashion - “You don’t take care of our child!” “Well, you never asked me to!” - until another couple, Angela and Kevin, start crying and admit they lost their baby. Jesus tapdancing Christ. They’re crying. In class. Because they lost. An egg. Instead of GOING TO THE REFRIGERATOR AND GETTING A NEW EGG BECAUSE THE TEACHER WILL NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. What the good goddamn is WRONG WITH THESE KIDS? I mean. Jesus. I should take a break and have another drink. I feel like I might be yelling.
Okay, back. Everyone topped off? Good, good. Angela’s still weeping like a lunatic, so Kevin explains that they carry their egg Cathy around in a cookie tin, and when they got to the park she was still in it, and then when they left she was gone. I don’t even understand how an egg falls out of a sealed cookie tin, much less without you noticing. Cathy was obviously trying to sell herself into child slavery to escape the pathetic sobs of her parents. Angela sniffles that she feels so terrible, because what if it were their real baby? This sobers the class, and Mary Anne dramatics that “in the blink of an eye, anything can happen to a child.” Like fall out of the cookie tin you carry it in, obviously. You see it all the time on those missing children Dateline specials.
Mrs. Boyden wants to know if they’re worried about their grade; Angela shrieks no, Kevin says yes, but insists that his grade “was not the first thing I thought about when I looked in the box and discovered it was empty.” It damn well better have been his second thought, after wondering how the hell he didn’t notice an egg splattering all over his shoes. Another couple announces that they can’t finish the project because it’s too much work, and I’m wondering what happened to the good old days when kids just lied and made up their project results. After class, the fact that most students are worse parents than they are does not bring Logan down to earth, and he refuses to hand Sammie over until Mary Anne runs away crying. What a jackass. And this is AFTER she dumped him for being a control freak?
Just to hammer the point home a little further, Mary Anne has another job with the Salem twins, and it’s even worse than last time - screaming, screaming, screaming, until she begs Dawn to come over and walk one while the other sleeps, then the other wakes up and starts screaming too and Dawn’s already left with the stroller, and I would feel sorry for her, but I’m snickering way too hard about the part where she really thought everyone would be fine if they took a parenting class.
Chapter 14, also known as Chapter Two Redux: Everyone Apologizes. Logan calls to apologize and they talk a lot of schmoop about what they learned - namely, that middle-schoolers should not have children and maybe they aren’t ready for marriage for another year or two. After the call, Mary Anne dramatically tells Dawn to throw away the catalog of baby shit, as little Tara Lizzie Tara Mary Tara Tara is not to be. If irony were on my side, Sharon would be getting knocked up right about now.
Modern Stupidity is, sadly, over, to be replaced by Health class. (“Isn’t sex education part of Health?” Deadbeat Milo asks, and Mary Anne spontaneously bursts into flame and dies.) The egg-babies are now 21 and ready to leave home, and everyone dramas about not wanting to know what horrible things Mrs. Boyden is going to do to them. SHE’S THROWING YOUR BABIES IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL. GET OVER IT. Mary Anne, still delusional, decides that Sammie is going off to New York to start her first job as an editorial assistant. I laugh and laugh and laugh hollowly.
At the next meeting, I immediately notice that Jessi’s name is spelled wrong on page 133. I hope Sammie gets fired for that. They expound some more on not wanting babies anymore, now that theirs are off being artists and car mechanics and unemployed editors. I can’t believe it took a whole class to convince them they’re not ready to be parents. I can’t believe they even still want to BABY-SIT after this. As a little ending irony, Richard and Sharon announce when Dawn and Mary Anne get home that since they’re so obsessed with babies, they can get another pet. They’re like, “FUCK NO.” Good call. I have two cats and a German shepherd puppy, and most of the time I’d like to carry them around the park in a loosely sealed cookie tin. Which I would, if I were sober enough to walk.
The beginning of this book is incredibly boring, as Mary Anne starts the exposition on the very first page: Mom’s dead, Dad’s strict, little girl braids, loosened up, high school sweetheart, blah blah. Ms. Martin, a word of advice - a “hook.” Try one. You’ll find more readers will be able make it past the second page without stopping to mix themselves a screwdriver, which is always favorable when your target audience is in the third grade.
“Dawn?” Mary Anne wants to know, once she’s finished explaining who Dawn is. “How come the hedge clippers are in the bread drawer?” I want to know what Sharon’s smoking, where I can get some, and if it goes well with orange juice and vodka. “Disorganized” is one thing; “completely cracked out” is another. I love the way Dawn shrugs all, “Probably Mom,” like it COULD be Sharon, or maybe it’s the Hedge Clipper Fairy. Mary Anne lets us all know that “a few months ago, I might have freaked out if I found hedge clippers in the bread drawer. Now I can handle the situation calmly.” ...I’m sorry, the “situation”? The hell? “Hi, Dad, I - oh my god. There are hedge clippers in the bread drawer. Oh my god. What do I do?...Okay, towels and boiling water, got it. Yes, please come home as soon as possible.” I’d probably start smoking drugs too, if I had to live with that level of high-strung.
While they have their snack - cookies for Mary Anne, hamster cage lining for Dawn - they start discussing how dibbly fresh it would be if their parents had a baby, and how it wouldn’t be any work for Richard and Sharon or anything, because they would take care of it themselves. Guys, I think the word you’re looking for here is “puppy.” They segue into how crap it is that they have to take a Modern Living class and learn all about marriage and finances and stuff. I kind of agree here; not that it’s not important stuff, but I don’t think that the things you learn about adult life in a classroom in the eighth grade are going to bear much resemblance to the real deal. Nor are you really going to remember it when it matters; it’s not like you’re 25, holding your own child for the first time, and then you carefully apply the practice you put in with a refrigerated good twelve years ago. Dawn, being annoying as always, wants to know why only eighth graders have to submit to this torture and not sixth and seventh graders too. Because it’s not as though sixth and seventh graders will eventually make it to eighth grade or anything. (“God! Why do I have to learn calculus and the kindergarteners don’t?”) I don’t feel like Dawn is going to fare well in the real world.
Chapter 2! (Alternate title: Zzzzzzz.) In case you were wondering, “a typical Claudia outfit might include a sequined shirt, stirrup pants (maybe black), low black boots, dangly turquoise earrings, and ribbons woven through tiny braids in her hair. And she wouldn’t forget the sparkly nail polish.” Yes, we get a description of Claudia’s clothes, with no fewer than nine detailed adjectives, for an outfit she IS NOT ACTUALLY WEARING. I think they all picture Claudia in their mind’s eye a little too much.
“Another thing about Claud,” Mary Anne lets us know, “She’s a terrible student. She could be a good one if she tried, but school just doesn’t interest her.” I hate the way they all make disclaimers about how Claudia isn’t dumb; she just doesn’t try. I knew kids like that, who were completely brilliant but cut a lot of school and slept in class and didn’t show up for tests. Claudia is not that student. Offhand, I can think of at least six books where she has to study for something or is being tutored by her family or whatever and she’s STILL a dunce. She may not enjoy school, but she actually tries really hard and she still makes shitty grades, so let’s stop deluding ourselves, guys.
The rest of chapter two is a snoozefest as always. Per standard second chapter outline, everyone rushes in to a meeting and gets described in turn, the BSC is described as the meeting occurs, either a new client or a special sitting gig is called in, and the narrator gets the job - in this case, it’s Mrs. Salem, the mother of infant twins, lining up a job with Mary Anne. It’s nice to know that some things will never change. Incidentally, there is not enough vodka in my drink.
Chapter 3! “Do you, Mary Anne Spier, take this man to be your husband?” Oh, NICE, Mary Anne finally got knocked up and Richard’s making her - oh, damn. It’s just the fake wedding in their Modern Living class. After the wedding, the teacher tells them that they’re all “biologically capable of becoming parents” (racy talk for a BSC book) and wants to know how many of them think they could handle it, and Mary Anne totally raises her hand. She’s going to be so embarrassed about that. I always felt like an asshole years later, remembering how grown-up I (incorrectly) thought I was at the time. She further makes a dick of things by saying that she knows she and Logan are ready to take “the big step” of marriage, and it really sounds creepy, because I don’t think she’s just talking about the class anymore. Some unidentified classmate who I am now in love with mumbles, “Like getting married to someone you see three times a week is realistic.” THANK YOU, ONLY SANE MEMBER OF THE CLASS. This is what I mean; you can’t learn to live and parent and make financial decisions together with someone you don’t even know. Love may not be everything, but it can damn well matters when you’re making a life for yourselves together. Also: nice norm reinforcement there, SMS. Don’t teach people how to pay rent and fend for themselves and maybe even - gasp! - be parents if they’re not married, which they probably won’t be when they first enter the real world and will need these lessons the most. Everything about this class is pointless.
Then again, some of them might really need this, because Shawna Riverson - if you’ll recall, a girl so stupid she actually cheated off of CLAUDIA - thinks that marriage really 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.” Some people don’t HAVE maps. And such.
Mary Anne, who raises her hand because she can’t possibly sound any stupider than that (no, she actually says that), says that marriage means commitment and trying to work things out when you have problems. So I guess she doesn’t really think that she and Logan are ready for the Big Step, seeing as how she eventually dumps him not once but twice. There’s some stuff about there not being enough girls to go around (shockingly, Logan does not volunteer to marry one of the leftover dudes) and it’s bizarre, because Logan suggests that the paired guys not actually decide who’s the husband and who’s the wife, and the teacher says it’s okay, “in that tone that teachers 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? I don’t...wait, WHAT? Nice way to enforce stereotypical gender norms, Sexist Teacher. Two guys have to pair up, so automatically one has to be the man and one has to be the woman? Is one of them going to have to wring their hands, spontaneously fall pregnant, and then make a quiche? I mean, their assignment is to figure out how to pay the rent; why the hell couldn’t that be two male roommates, if it matters so damn much? She creepily adds that they “may be asked to be couples outside of class,” and that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. This teacher sucks.
Mary Anne and Logan meet after school to start scouting for living arrangements, and they simultaneously crap themselves when all the apartments are eight hundred to two thousand dollars a month. Welcome to adulthood! They start adding and realize that together, they don’t make enough in a year to afford a single month’s rent. Thus, fatal flaw number two of this Modern Stupidity class: don’t they normally assign you some fictional jobs and income to work with? I mean, no eighth-grader is financially solvent, so if they only have their own money, what’s the point of this class? “Well, we can’t afford anything. Homework’s done.” That’s not actually how you learn to budget, Idiot Sexist Teacher.
Instead of giving up on the grounds of this assignment being really, really dumb, Mary Anne and Logan press on by deciding that they’ll live at home, then have an argument over whose house they’ll live in. Logan doesn’t want to live at the Spier’s because Richard will “watch him all the time,” and Mary Anne doesn’t want to live with her nine-year-old sister in law and her five-year-old brother-in-law. “Anyway,” she adds, “I want us to have our own place. I want to hang curtains and paint cupboards.” Mary Anne, sweetie. It’s fake. Even if you had your own (fictional) home, you don’t actually get to decorate it. This is where the real storyline starts, because the rest of this book should be entitled “Mary Anne and the Students Who Take a Fictional Assignment Way 2 Seriously.” They eventually decide to live at Mary Anne’s, even though “Logan would be embarrassed to admit he’d be living in a girl’s bedroom.” Right, a guy who can’t handle PRETENDING to live in a girl’s room is certainly ready for marriage.
Mary Anne’s off to her sitting job at the Salem’s, and poor Mrs. Salem is a walking zombie. When Mary Anne asks what’s wrong, Mrs. Salem’s like, “Um, I have twin infants, genius.” Mary Anne is dismissive, though, because the BSC once sat for fourteen kids for a whole week and she’s sat for the Pikes loads of times. Mary Anne is in for a cold hard dose of reality pretty soon, I think. She looks over her Modern Stupidity notes while the twins are sleeping and notes that parenting isn’t a big deal. “If everyone would just take a child care course, they’d be prepared.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I know that the eventual moral of this tale is that Mary Anne finds out what hard work parenting actually is, but I can’t believe someone could make it all the way to the eighth grade and be so stupid.
When the twins wake up, she changes their diapers and carries them to the kitchen one at a time. I know that a 13-year-old might not be that strong, but honestly. One in each arm. Or one in your arms, one in a sling. Or put them in their punkin seats and carry them that way. Do you really think that Mrs. Salem wanders around all day transporting them one at a time? (My in-laws have twin babies and I’ve seen them get creative.) Other than that, the twins are angels and actually sound quite adorable. Mary Anne gushes about them to Dawn when she gets home and they start talking again about how Richard and Sharon should have a baby. They start talking about how fun it would be to dress up a little sister and what they would name her. Guys. I think the word you’re looking for is “doll.” Hilariously, Richard and Sharon come home and bust them, and Dawn says, “We have noticed a pattern. People get married, and then they have babies.” Oh dear. Sharon’s all, “Yeah, we did that once before, remember? With you two?” Mary Anne wants to know if they want to have a baby together, and Richard's like, “...No. And now I’m going to go have a vasectomy just to shut you up.” They stop talking, but the fact that Richard and Sharon have definitively said they do not want another child does nothing to stop Mary Anne from mentally choosing names for her imaginary little sister. I think Mary Anne has suffered a head injury, because she lists Tara four times.
Mary Anne and Logan don’t know what to say in Modern Stupidity the next day, because they think “‘we can’t afford anything’ is not what Mrs. Boyden wants to hear.” Um...I reiterate, THEY ARE THIRTEEN GODDAMN YEARS OLD. What the bloody fuck is she EXPECTING to hear? “With my allowance and his paper route, we have secured ourselves a summer home in Maine”? Because they are brown nosers, they make graphs showing how much apartments cost and how much they should be making if they want one, instead of telling Mrs. Boyden what a waste of school funds this entire endeavor is.
When they show up in class, the teacher has an open carton of eggs on her desk, and Mary Anne nervously whispers to Logan, “Do you think Mrs. Boyden is angry at our class? Did we do something wrong?” What? Does she think the teacher is going to THROW the eggs at them or something? This class just took a turn for the awesome. Sadly, though, she just hands them out and tells them that the eggs are now their babies. She says, “Your babies must be fed regularly, clothed, taken to the doctor, and especially, watched over,” and lets them know that they are on the honor system to do this at all times. Shawna wants to know if they actually have to take the egg to the doctor, and Mrs. Boyden acts like this is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. Except that it’s kind of not, because I’m confused as to how you pretend to take an egg to the doctor. Are they supposed to be sitting in their bedrooms after school, holding an imaginary conversation with an imaginary pediatrician? And they’re on the HONOR SYSTEM to actually do this? Do you think that Mrs. Boyden and Sharon are meeting out behind the football bleachers after school to toke up? Cite examples.
She goes on to say that they don’t actually have to prepare food and pretend to feed the egg either, but they do have to be with the egg at mealtimes, because a baby can’t feed itself, and they have to hold it, because a baby can’t sit up by itself, and I honestly do not understand this assignment. What DO they have to do? Hold the egg and stare at it to simulate the time they would be spending feeding it? Hold the egg and stare at it to simulate the time they would be spending dressing it? Hold the egg and stare at it to simulate the time they would be spending changing diapers? How, exactly, is this preparing them for anything involving real life? This is truly the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Logan is freaking out for no particular reason and says that they can’t carry it around all day. Mary Anne’s like, “But we have to,” and he says he’ll put it in his backpack. Mary Anne thinks it’ll be safer in her purse, and Logan worries that it’ll suffocate in there. The hell, does he want to buy it a stroller or something? Logan. IT IS AN EGG. GET A GRIP. During gym, the sane girls just toss their eggs on the floor, but Mary Anne is careful to put hers where she can see it and worries that no one will be able to tell their babies apart. Because real parents certainly would just grab the wrong baby out of a lineup. At lunch, Mary Anne and Logan meet up and Mary Anne says, “Look, I’m sure she’s hungry by now. Why don’t you eat while I feed her? Then I’ll eat while you finish feeding her. We should probably feed her again at...” This is a descent into madness.
It turns out Kristy and Alan Gray have been paired up in their Modern Stupidity class, and they are model parents, by which I mean creepy parents, to their egg Izzy. They read to him and play him music and put up little pictures in his box to stimulate him. Guys. IT IS AN EGG. GET A GRIP. Alan gets all dreamy about fatherhood, which is completely realistic for a boy in middle school who still makes fart jokes. When Kristy takes Izzy to her sitting job at the Papadakises, she tries to explain the egg-baby project to them, and they are really creeped out. As well they should be. More so when Alan actually calls to find out how Izzy is (he was “just thinking about” him) and they discuss the goddamn egg as if it were a real person: Alan thinks Kristy should feed him more, Kristy says that he’s napping now and that he was very shy when she first got to the Papadakises, Alan thinks he isn’t socializing enough. I would type out the dialogue, but it is so frightening that I prefer to pretend I dreamed up this entire exchange. They talk for “quite awhile,” and I’m sure the Papadakises will be thrilled to discover how much time the baby-sitter spent on their phone making up a personality for a food item.
It turns out that Kristy isn’t Wonder Mom after all, because by the time she gets off the phone, she’s lost track of her fake child AND her very real sitting charges. It turns out they took Izzy with them to the playroom and promptly lost him, and Hannie and Linny make a lot of annoying but kind of clever egg-related puns while Kristy freaks out. She tears up the playroom looking for him and finally realizes that Sari has him, and like, nice job she must be doing watching the REAL baby given how long it takes Kristy to notice that she’s sitting there playing with an egg.
Mary Anne and Logan have finally settled on naming their egg Sammie after arguing about it for four days...four days to name an egg? IT’S AN EGG. CALL IT “EGG” FOR ALL IT MATTERS. They make her a little wicker basket to travel in, and Logan is apparently “a model father.” Right. If this were realistic, all the boys would have been out on the baseball diamond blowing up their children with bottle rockets on the first day. Unfortunately, Mary Anne’s got to take Sammie on her sitting job with the Salem twins, because Logan is taking his siblings to the playground and he doesn’t want her to get too much sun. That’s kind of realistic, actually; that sucker would rot pretty quickly outside.
And awesomely, the whole job goes to shit as the twins are screaming and Mary Anne can’t juggle them AND Sammie, and she totally neglects them to carry around her fucking egg and makes them hold their own bottles so she can “feed” Sammie and there’s lots more screaming. I would be SO FUCKING PISSED if I found out that the baby-sitter wasn’t giving her full attention to my infants so she could pretend to feed an egg. I also am completely bewildered as to who is honestly such a goody-goody as to make her own life so difficult for the sake of the “honor system.” Any sane person would have chucked that thing aside the minute the babies started crying. Of course, as she discusses the job with Dawn later, she dismisses the scenario as “unrealistic” because she wouldn’t normally be watching three infants at once. Uh-huh. It’s not as though Mrs. Pike would have had four infants at once or anything. This nightmare does not stale them on wanting a baby sister one bit, as they go through a catalog of baby stuff picking out the things they like. I do that sort of thing all the time, but see, the difference is I understand that I’m just having fun picking out hypothetical items. They actually THINK they’re getting these things, and when Richard catches them again he’s all, “The hell? How many times do I have to tell you bitches we’re not having a baby?”
The next day at the BSC meeting, Stacey, Mary Anne, and Kristy all have their babies with them at the meeting, and they set them all on the dresser with pillows around them in case they fall. Um, they’re in a mixing bowl, a basket, and a box, where the hell do you think they’re going to go? THEY ARE EGGS. Although as we find out later, the eggs are obviously sentient and attempting to flee their horrible horrible parents, so perhaps there’s something to this. (Also, interestingly, Claudia’s egg-baby is with his father, but no mention is made of Dawn’s baby. Is she even IN this class, when she was the one bitching about it to begin with? She is SUCH a whiner.)
Mary Anne actually starts crying because she thinks Logan is hogging the baby, and Stacey is the lone voice of sanity by rolling her eyes and pointing out that it’s a goddamn egg, and not much fun to take care of, at that. I knew there was a reason she’s my favorite. Jessi solemnly asks what it’s like being married, and BAHAHAHAHA. They say they have to communicate and agree and trust each other, and Jessi joins Stacey on the sane side by pointing out that none of them love their “husbands” and that probably makes a difference. Mary Anne’s like, “I do love him! And the marriage still sucks.” So maybe they ARE learning something from this little experiment. Just then Logan calls to have a creepy conversation like Kristy and Alan’s, where he nags Mary Anne to feed Sammie and keep her warm and stuff. You know he’s taking things too seriously when he risks Kristy’s wrath by tying up the phone line during a meeting. Mallory thinks they’re getting off easy, because she knows firsthand how hard it is for a mother to deal with a baby, but Mary Anne thinks to herself that Richard and Sharon will have it so much easier because she and Dawn will do all the work. My GOD, this girl is deluded.
Stacey’s the next one to take her egg-baby on a sitting job, and doesn’t fare much better than Kristy, as Alicia Gianelli is terrified of eggs. It’s hilarious; Stacey’s all, “LOOK AT MY BABY!” and Alicia flips the hell out. Bobby Gianelli just thinks it’s weird and is none too pleased to have the same name as Stacey’s egg. There’s a stupid “who’s on first” bit about Bobby the kid and Bobby the egg, and finally Stacey has to call Austin Bentley, her husband, to come get the egg. She ends up realizing how hard it must be to be a single parent and not have anyone to call and help you, and decides she isn’t going to have a real baby for a long, long time. You know, stupid and weird though this book is most of the time, it’s actually got a pretty good, realistic message.
Mary Anne opens chapter 10 whining about how she and Logan hasn’t had any time together since the baby, and she supposes that they COULD have taken Sammie with them to Pizza Express or the coffee place or something, but “it just didn’t seem like a great idea.” Uh, why not? IT’S AN EGG. I know the idea is that real parents don’t get much time together, but she says that they would have had to hold Sammie and feed her and stuff, and it would have “defeated the purpose” of going out. You can’t talk to someone with an egg in your hand? This doesn’t even make sense anymore. Furthermore, I love the fact that they’re in the Baby-Sitters Club and it never once occurs to them to get a baby-sitter. Seriously, drop the thing off with Kristy for a little while and say that Sammie and Izzy are having a play date. Unlike real children, it’s not actually harder to watch two eggs than one, so I don’t see the problem here.
So she gets all excited when Logan asks her to go to a movie (because she actually thinks that Logan cares more about Sammie than her, and I think maybe it’s time to end a relationship when you feel that your partner feels more strongly about a refrigerated item than you). Only Logan thinks she’s getting a baby-sitter for Sammie and she doesn’t. He’s all, “We can’t bring a baby to a movie!” Um. See, the reason babies are not a good idea at movies is because they cry and disturb other people. I think maybe your egg has not evolved that function yet. Then again, since they randomly make up when she’s sleeping and when she’s hungry and all that, he’d probably just jump up suddenly during the movie and yell, “Sorry, baby’s crying! I have to take her out!” And then they would put him away in a nice padded room for a little while, just like Sammie’s.
Mary Anne finally convinces him that it’ll be okay, and they spend a fortune on popcorn and sodas and they can’t carry it all with Sammie and the twelve extra sweaters Mary Anne’s brought along for no apparent reason. Jesus. Sling the sweaters over one arm. Sling the basket over the other. Popcorn in left hand. Soda in right. It’s like they go looking for problems, it really is. Then they can’t find enough space for everything, and Mary Anne smushes Sammie in a seat and Logan and I are both, “Just HOLD her, god!” but she whines that she can’t eat that way and plops Sammie and the sweaters in a third seat. A guy comes by and pointedly asks if the seat is taken, and thank you, random man. Pet peeve of mine. If you want three seats, then buy three goddamn tickets. They reconfigure again so Mary Anne’s sitting on her sweaters - why did she bring them if she wasn’t going to wear them? - and holding Sammie, but now she can’t reach her food because it’s on the floor. Oh my GOD, Mary Anne. Soda in the cupholder. Popcorn on your right leg. Basket on your left. How can this POSSIBLY be so difficult? She wants to put Sammie on the floor while she eats and Logan objects, but she says she’ll put Sammie right between her feet so she’ll know if anyone takes the basket. Because kidnappers often trawl movie theaters looking for eggs to snatch. Pretty soon she feels around the basket and Sammie isn’t in it anymore and she flips out. IT’S AN EGG. How the hell could it disappear from a stationary basket? Logan calls over an usher to shine around his flashlight and it turns out Sammie is just rolling around under the seat. I used to work in a movie theater and I think I would have clubbed you with my flashlight if you asked me to come look for your missing pretend child in the middle of a movie. As it is, the guy next to them is really pissed and finally Logan’s like, “WE’RE LEAVING,” and drags Mary Anne out in the middle of the show. That Logan and his iron chains of love are scary controlling. They have a fight in the lobby about who’s taking the baby - because Mary Anne is a terrible mother for losing their child and the father sitting six inches away holds no responsibility - and I throw the book across the room and pour myself a third drink.
Chapter 11: The Pike kids decide they want egg babies too and predictably use up a whole carton. Apparently, “the Pike kids can make anything fun.” That is all I have to say about that. (Oh, and Dawn does have an egg. His name is Skip. She is a snotty bitch about how she hates the name Skip. I hate Dawn.)
Chapter 12! Shawna Riverson wants a divorce. (She doesn’t know her marriage isn’t real because they didn’t have a plastic wedding bell, because no one knows what a plastic wedding bell is.) She’s pissed that her husband is a deadbeat and she has to take all the responsibility for their nameless egg. She complains that she was late for school because she forgot the egg and had to run all the way home for it, and while Deadbeat Husband gives his side of the story, Mary Anne thinks, “Shawna and Miles had not named their egg. They didn’t want to be bothered with it..Yet Shawna did treat the egg as her baby. If she’d been totally disinterested, she could have left her baby at home when she realized what she’d done. But she went back for it. I was amazed at how real our children had become to us.” Right, because REAL parents totally think, “Oh, shit, I left the oven on! And something else...oh, yeah, I left the kid behind too.” Here’s an idea, Mary Anne: Maybe she went back for the damn egg so she wouldn’t get in trouble for not having it; not because she actually gives a shit. And honestly, why should she? They’re THIRTEEN, for the hundred-thousandth time. There is no shame in not being interested in parenthood before you can drive. There’s no shame in not being interested in parenthood at all, come to that, but it seems especially stupid to expect a teenager to take being a mother seriously when you would just look down on her if she got knocked up for real.
Shawna and Miles continue pissing at each other in dramatic new parent fashion - “You don’t take care of our child!” “Well, you never asked me to!” - until another couple, Angela and Kevin, start crying and admit they lost their baby. Jesus tapdancing Christ. They’re crying. In class. Because they lost. An egg. Instead of GOING TO THE REFRIGERATOR AND GETTING A NEW EGG BECAUSE THE TEACHER WILL NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. What the good goddamn is WRONG WITH THESE KIDS? I mean. Jesus. I should take a break and have another drink. I feel like I might be yelling.
Okay, back. Everyone topped off? Good, good. Angela’s still weeping like a lunatic, so Kevin explains that they carry their egg Cathy around in a cookie tin, and when they got to the park she was still in it, and then when they left she was gone. I don’t even understand how an egg falls out of a sealed cookie tin, much less without you noticing. Cathy was obviously trying to sell herself into child slavery to escape the pathetic sobs of her parents. Angela sniffles that she feels so terrible, because what if it were their real baby? This sobers the class, and Mary Anne dramatics that “in the blink of an eye, anything can happen to a child.” Like fall out of the cookie tin you carry it in, obviously. You see it all the time on those missing children Dateline specials.
Mrs. Boyden wants to know if they’re worried about their grade; Angela shrieks no, Kevin says yes, but insists that his grade “was not the first thing I thought about when I looked in the box and discovered it was empty.” It damn well better have been his second thought, after wondering how the hell he didn’t notice an egg splattering all over his shoes. Another couple announces that they can’t finish the project because it’s too much work, and I’m wondering what happened to the good old days when kids just lied and made up their project results. After class, the fact that most students are worse parents than they are does not bring Logan down to earth, and he refuses to hand Sammie over until Mary Anne runs away crying. What a jackass. And this is AFTER she dumped him for being a control freak?
Just to hammer the point home a little further, Mary Anne has another job with the Salem twins, and it’s even worse than last time - screaming, screaming, screaming, until she begs Dawn to come over and walk one while the other sleeps, then the other wakes up and starts screaming too and Dawn’s already left with the stroller, and I would feel sorry for her, but I’m snickering way too hard about the part where she really thought everyone would be fine if they took a parenting class.
Chapter 14, also known as Chapter Two Redux: Everyone Apologizes. Logan calls to apologize and they talk a lot of schmoop about what they learned - namely, that middle-schoolers should not have children and maybe they aren’t ready for marriage for another year or two. After the call, Mary Anne dramatically tells Dawn to throw away the catalog of baby shit, as little Tara Lizzie Tara Mary Tara Tara is not to be. If irony were on my side, Sharon would be getting knocked up right about now.
Modern Stupidity is, sadly, over, to be replaced by Health class. (“Isn’t sex education part of Health?” Deadbeat Milo asks, and Mary Anne spontaneously bursts into flame and dies.) The egg-babies are now 21 and ready to leave home, and everyone dramas about not wanting to know what horrible things Mrs. Boyden is going to do to them. SHE’S THROWING YOUR BABIES IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL. GET OVER IT. Mary Anne, still delusional, decides that Sammie is going off to New York to start her first job as an editorial assistant. I laugh and laugh and laugh hollowly.
At the next meeting, I immediately notice that Jessi’s name is spelled wrong on page 133. I hope Sammie gets fired for that. They expound some more on not wanting babies anymore, now that theirs are off being artists and car mechanics and unemployed editors. I can’t believe it took a whole class to convince them they’re not ready to be parents. I can’t believe they even still want to BABY-SIT after this. As a little ending irony, Richard and Sharon announce when Dawn and Mary Anne get home that since they’re so obsessed with babies, they can get another pet. They’re like, “FUCK NO.” Good call. I have two cats and a German shepherd puppy, and most of the time I’d like to carry them around the park in a loosely sealed cookie tin. Which I would, if I were sober enough to walk.