The BSC: Staple of my childhood

If this blog was called "Books I Read When I Was 8," most of the entries would be about Babysitters Club (BSC) books. Further, most of those entries would be about how formulaic those books were and how I always skipped Chapter Two (in which some surrogate Ann M. Martin described the origins of the BSC) except for the parts that discussed what the babysitters were all wearing (but there's already a blog about that, so I won't go there).

But while that is a blog for another day, the Books I Read When I Was 8 apparently influenced at least one of the Poems I Wrote When I Was 12 (side note: my mom claims to this day that my poem-writing obsession replaced my BSC-reading obsession, which is a false accusation because everyone knows that just like Seventeen magazine, the only people who read the BSC series were about 4-5 years younger than the characters featured in it). So if you weren't lucky enough to cultivate an obsession with the gals from Stoneybrook, Connecticut like I did, take this opportunity to brush up on the ABCs of the BSC.

The BSC

The Babysitters Club
Are the best friends I ever had
They live in a town called Stoneybrook
Where nothing's ever bad

Stacey's from the city
She's very cool, it's true
And every day she goes out
And must buy something new

Claudia's an artist
Her clothes are very weird
She'll wear some shoes like Hercules
Or even a fake red beard [author's note: this is weird, but I also wouldn't put it past ol' Claud]

Kristy is their leader
She's bossy and she's loud
She coaches a little softball team
When they win it makes her proud!

MaryAnne's the shy one
She's caring and she cries
Once a stupid cat food ad
Made her wet her eyes

Dawn is from the coast
California to be exact
She cares about our planet
Believe me, that's a fact

Abby is Dawn's replacement
She sniffles and she snorts
She tells a lot of dumb jokes
And she's really into sports

Mallory is eleven
She's quiet and she reads
She has a lot of siblings
Seven of them indeed

Jessi is a dancer
She has lessons every week
She's Mallory's best friend
They both are total geeks

Next is Logan Bruno
He's MaryAnne's boyfriend
He's an associate member
(We're almost to the end)

Shannon is the smart one
She goes to private school
She's in a lot of clubs and things
She isn't very cool

This is the BSC
They meet 3 times a week
They are pretty stupid
But that's just what I think

Hmmm. I'm sensing just a teensy bit of animosity at the end of that poem towards my once-beloved babysitters. Maybe because I regretted wasting so many hours of my life caring about them, or maybe because when I wrote this, my own emerging babysitting career was neither as lucrative nor as fun as it seemed to be for those Stoneybrook girls (and token boy, Logan). But I have to say, if memory serves me, I think I summed up their character traits pretty well. If only I'd found a way to incorporate Claudia's fake stack of books for hiding candy (I actually have one of these-- thanks Lauren!)