Stacey has never been so wrong in her life!

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The Baby-sitters Club #18: Stacey’s Mistake


Really, Stace? You’ve never been so wrong? Really? What about the time you thought you were going to run off to la-la-land with Scott Foley? What about the time you tried to set your mother up with appalling drama queen John Brooke? Let’s try to keep a bit of perspective here, ok?

I’m not going to lie, I LOVED re-reading this book. I believe that I have made clear in the past that Stacey’s life in NYC is pretty much the entire reason I chose to move from the Midwest to NYC when I was 23. And seriously, even though I am on the far side of my 20s these days, and Stace is 13, I totally identified with her SO MUCH in this book. Those parts will be made clear in the coming paragraphs through my squealing and digression into meaningless anecdotes from my own life. That is why you read, right?

So a bunch of the adults in Stacey’s (AWESOME, UPPER WEST SIDE, WHITE-GLOVE DOORMAN) building (seriously, what does Ed do for a living? I’ll marry him!) are planning to attend this big neighborhood meeting about homelessness (this is possibly the most bizarre premise ever, but I’m just going to run with it) and 5 different families ask Stacey to babysit. Rather than turn down 4 of them, Stace has the brilliant idea to invite the BSC (minus Jessi and Mallory, which right away shoots this book to the top of my LOVE list) to visit NYC and babysit all the kids.

The girls have Friday off from school, so Stacey goes to meet them at Grand Central. Of course, they get lost even though they are meeting at the Info Booth, which is IMPOSSIBLE to miss. Stacey gets frustrated and worried. I UNDERSTAND. Because I go through this almost every time someone visits me. I pick the most conspicuous location in the building, whether it’s GCT, Penn Station, one of the airports, wherever, and people still do ridiculous things and do not follow instructions. Like how the BSC is all “Sorry, Stace. We just followed a bunch of people and then we took an escalator and then we ended up outside” and Stace is all “Dipshits. To even get to the escalator, you’d have to walk RIGHT PAST the information booth. And did I TELL you to take an escalator? No, I did not. Ugh.” I might be paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

And THEN, Mary Freakin' Anne has to go and whip out her map and guidebook and stand in the middle of the freaking station looking all confused, and she and Stacey have the EXACT SAME CONVERSATION I have with my mom every time she comes to visit. Stacey/Me: “Put that away! You look like a tourist.” MA/My Mom: “Well, I am one.” Stacey/Me: “Well, I’m not. Come on, put it away… that makes us easy targets.” Really, is this so hard to comprehend? I don’t understand why we have to go through this every single time.

So they finally meet up, but then they have to take a cab back up and across town to Stacey’s building to drop off Claudia’s ENORMOUS suitcase (Stace calls it the boxcar. I laugh, but I shouldn’t, because in my teenage years I was the most notorious over-packer you’ve ever seen. I couldn’t spend the night down the street without a duffel bag large enough to store a dead body.) So then everybody’s pissy about that waste of time. They head back downtown to go to lunch at the Hard Rock Café, and confession time again: I ADORE the Hard Rock Café. Really. To this day I try to at least take a picture of myself at a HRC whenever I travel. I am aware of how lame this makes me, but come on. It’s so delightfully tacky! However, this whole scene makes me laugh because the girls are so concerned about how “cool” the HRC is. Honestly, this proves how long ago it was! Even Stacey doesn’t think it’s a tourist trap, and she is MORTIFIED when Kristy orders “fill-it mig-non” in this super-cool restaurant (thank God this is before the days of the obnoxious term “dibble”. I couldn’t handle the HRC being deemed “dibble” or even worse “dibbly-fresh.”)

They leave the HRC after buying t-shirts (I have an insane number of HRC t-shirts myself. I used to ask my family and friends to buy them for me when they traveled as well. I never wear them anymore…. I kind of want to make one of those T-shirt quilts out of them, but although I sew a lot of my own clothes, I’ve never made a quilt before, so I’d have to make a practice quilt first to make sure I didn’t destroy my beloved HRC t-shirts, and who has that kind of time?) and are accosted by a panhandler on the street. Kristy immediately whips out her wallet, and Stacey freaks out, shoves it back in her purse, and yanks them all away, and OMG, I totally understand! I am ALWAYS having this problem, usually with my family from the Midwest. Like Stacey says, I feel bad for people, and I try to keep some spare change in my pockets so that I can easily give it out, but you CANNOT open your purse/wallet on the sidewalk. It makes you an easy target. Anyone could grab it and run. People just don’t get it. And don’t tell me “that’s not going to happen.” Do you really want to test that theory?

So add this to the list of things that have Dawn freaking the hell out (also on this list: the elevator in Stacey’s building, a mouse nosing around some garbage). I’ll never understand Dawn’s paralyzing fear of NYC. I thought she was supposed to be so independent and fearless. Anyway, they head off to Bloomingdale’s, where Mary Anne gets busted for taking a tester of eye shadow from the Clinique counter. She thought it was a sample. I think she’s a moron. Then the girls head back to Stacey’s building where they go around and introduce themselves to the families they’ll be sitting for the next day. At least NYC families seem to care about their children, although I’m not sure many NYC parents would really let their children go traipsing through Central Park in the late 80s with a couple of 13-year-olds. That sounds like an early episode of Law and Order waiting to happen.

So that night Stacey throws a party for her NYC friends to meet her CT friends, and it goes abominably. Laine and Claudia do not get along (of note: Laine’s outfit. “short black dress, black leggings, and simple black flats. On one wrist was a single silver bangle bracelet. On her dress was one of those silver squiggle pins… She looked wonderful-at least 19.” Okay, 1) No. No 13-year-old looks 19. I don’t care what the hell she’s wearing. And 2) Minus the silver squiggle pin, I wear that exact outfit pretty much every single day. Clearly, I am awesome and New York-ish!) Everyone thinks MA is a freak (including me) because she goes around talking like a freaking guidebook and asking total strangers how many times they’ve ridden the Staten Island Ferry (far more than I’ve ever wanted to, that’s for sure) and whether they’ve ever seen some tiny house that Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived in (as if 13 year olds have any idea who that is. I barely know who that is.) So MA instead begins making fun of Dawn and telling the NYC kids how scared she is, and then the NYC kids like MA, because apparently they are assholes. Kristy hits it off with one of Stacey’s guy friends, and then just as they are about to slow dance, Claudia cuts in (because she too is a total biz-natch.) At the end of the night, Laine decides NOT to spend the night (as she had been planning) but instead to PEACE OUT and everyone goes to bed all pissed off.

Next day: The girls call a truce so they can be good baby-sitters. They gather all the kids up and take them to the Museum of Natural History (AWESOME place!) to see the dinosaurs. They manage to lose one of the kids (adorable Henry Walker, of Henry and Grace fame) and they don’t notify anyone! I mean, they find him, but still he’s missing for like 20 minutes! Those are precious minutes when you’ve lost a kid in NYC! I just couldn’t believe this. I know it was 23 years ago (seriously. This book was written the year my little sister was born! So crazy to me.) and things were a little bit different, but I would imagine not that different. And none of the parents’ reads them the riot act when they get back. I just can’t imagine finding out that my child was lost in NYC for even 20 minutes. Not cool, BSC. You are not as responsible as everyone says.

Anyway though, after they find little lost Henry, they have lunch at the museum and then take the kids through Central Park, stopping at the children’s zoo, and the Delacorte Clock, and the Alice in Wonderland Statue and the Boat Pond. I do love Central Park! And so does Stacey. Claudia mentions how nice it is to see her enjoying something, not being all too cool for school and I HAVE HAD THIS EXACT CONVERSATION with visitors. I guess, like Stacey, it’s really easy for me to get jaded and take NYC for granted and believe we’ve seen everything and know everything. When you look at it through visitors’ eyes, it really can be amazing.

So they all make up and then that night they make up with Laine too, primarily because her dad, some big Broadway producer (like Maxwell Sheffield! J’adore Maxwell Sheffield!) gets them awesome free house seats for Starlight Express! Hahahaha. I am dying of laughter. Oh, man, this book really was written in the 80s. It doesn’t get more 80s on Broadway than Starlight Express. Roller skating trains, people. Roller. Skating. Trains. Fan-freakin-tastic. So they go to dinner at a fancy restaurant, just the 6 of them, then take a limo to the theatre, and I have to admit to being slightly jealous because, confession time: I have never ridden in a limo, and it sounds pretty amazing (No, I did not have the quintessential Midwest prom experience with the limo and corsage and whatnot. Remind me sometime when I’m feeling particularly masochistic to tell you about my prom horror stories.)

The next morning they all eat bagels and lox and act like it is the most adventurous thing they’ve ever done. Yeesh, they really are provincial, aren’t they? Finally, they have to go back to Grand Central to catch their train and they all cry and talk about missing each other, and I look forward to re-reading and recapping the New York Super Special in a few weeks when I go visit my parents! I f-love the BSC in NYC!