The Baby-sitters Club #39: Poor Mallory!
Ah, yes, another ridiculous Mallory book about labor relations. Except this time, she deals with lay-offs and poor money management, instead of going on freaking strike because her parents expect her to help out around the house.
We open with Mallory giving like a 3 page discourse on use of the word “dibble” which is obviously the dumbest word ever. It’s like “Stop trying to make “fetch” happen, Karen” (tm Regina George). Dibble this, Mallory.
So Mr. Pike, the corporate lawyer, gets laid off. I’m just calling it like it is. This whole book they make a huge deal about him being “fired” so I’m just going to state here and now that he is NOT fired. He is laid off. He gets a pink-slip. It’s cutbacks. He’s let go. Fired would be if he f-ed up a big account then told his boss to f-off (which is something I personally dream about on a daily basis. I mean for me, not for Mr. P.) His company is downsizing. They let a ton of people go all in one day. THAT’S NOT FIRING. God, Ann M. Get it together. Given how many people I know these days who’ve been both fired and laid off, I think I know the difference.
Anyway, the Pikes, all 10 of them, pretty flip their shit at this development. I mean, it’s not great news or anything, but come on. It’s not the end of the world, unless the Pikes are as irresponsible with their money as they are with their parenting. They do seem to spend and awful lot of money on vacations and multiple baby-sitters. That first night, after Mr. P. makes the announcement, the Pike parents enumerate the austerity measures they will be implementing (unlike students in London, the Pike children do not riot) including no extras, no new clothes, no junk food, no allowances. One of the kids is like “Should we even be eating dinner?” Geez Oh freakin’ Pete, way to scare the shit out of your kids, Pike parents. How about take it down a few notches, okay geniuses?
The Pike kids form the “Pike Club” to discuss their family’s situation. The Pike Club is full of idiots.
Mal tells the BSC and Kristy decides that she should give Mal her regular sitting job at the Delaney’s, and Mal also long-sufferingly agrees to baby-sit for Jenny Prezzioso too, because she needs the money. Bite me, Mal. Jenny is ten times more awesome than you will ever be. You are not worthy to unbuckle her delightful patent leather Mary Janes.
So Mal starts watching the Delaney kids, Max and my beloved Amanda, snob extraordinaire. The Delaney’s are awesomely tacky, right down to the goldfish fountain that spits water in their foyer. The Delaney’s have a new swimming pool and the rule is that when a sitter is in charge, one of the neighbors has to be home in order for the kids to use the pool. Um, what now? I do not understand how this rule helps anything. Are the neighbors trained lifeguards? Are they watching out the window? If (god forbid) one of those kids starts drowning, how is the neighbor taking a nap in her third floor bedroom going to help the situation? And then all the neighbor kids start coming over to swim, and why are their parents okay with this? An 11 year old kid with no lifesaving skills watching 6 kids in a swimming pool? That’s not a recipe for a lawsuit or anything!
Anyway, the whole thing is how Mal feels sad because she has no money but she sees that “being a princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be” (um, I beg to differ!) because all the neighborhood kids are just using Max and Amanda for their pool. None of the kids actually like spending time with them except for the insufferable Karen Brewer, and for the life of me I can’t understand why Amanda puts up with her anyway. But really, why is having a pool such a huge draw in this ritzy neighborhood? There were a fair number of pools in my neighborhood growing up, and it certainly wasn’t ritzy. Whatevs.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pike’s job search is apparently not going well, and he sinks into a short period of depression (what?! Actual realism in a BSC book?!) God, job searching before the internet must have SUCKED. Having to read the stupid classifieds and circle ads and mail resumes and all that crap. God, it’s bad enough with the internet (trust me, I know.) If Mr. P wants to take a few days to wear his bathrobe and sit in the La-Z-Boy and drink “a glass of something” (I certainly hope it was vodka!) then I say more power to him. Mrs. P, who has started working for a temp agency, does not share my leniency and reads him the riot act so he gets his butt in gear.
The Pike Club decides they should try to earn some money of their own, so the triplets form some kind of ridiculous odd-job service, Nicky gets a paper route, Claire and Margo do something that I don’t care enough to remember, and we have to sit through a long, boring Jessi chapter just to learn from Becca that Vanessa is earning money by styling hair on the playground, not from selling her poetry. I do not quite understand why this is so hysterical, since she seems to be quite good at it and it seems like it could be a respectable career for her. Mal saves all her baby-sitting money and decides she needs to get straight A’s so she can get a scholarship to college in case her dad doesn’t find another job. Um, Mal, you have 7 siblings. Methinks you’re going to need a scholarship no matter what.
There are also a couple of girls at school who totally make fun of Mal for her dad getting fired, which I really don’t buy. For starters, why would they even know about that? I don’t recall ever really knowing what was going on with people’s parents. Whatever, Mal finally decides to stand up to them. Great. Awesome. I don’t care.
Finally, finally, Amanda and Max come to terms with who their real friends are and stop letting people use them for their pool. Mal realizes that the people who make fun of her aren’t her real friends either. And then Senor Pike finally gets another job as a lawyer for some company called “Metro-works”. What the hell do you think they do? He’s not getting paid as much, but he’ll take it. AND THEN, we find out that Mr. Pike was getting severance pay this whole time. Good god, they acted like the entire family was going to be living in a cardboard box next week. I’m so glad this book is over.
Oh wait, not quite. We are treated to the “first ever BSC sleepover at Mal’s.” Wow. Thriller. They eat sandwiches and prank call the girls who were mean to Mallory, using Sam’s favorite prank call, something about a pig farm. Sam, you know I love you, but your favorite prank call is LAME-O. And NOW, I’m so glad this book is over. The end.
Just discover your blog, thanks for the laughs. Yeah, Mallory was really the whipping boy of the series, wasn’t she? One of the most absurd situations I’ve ever see Mallory in (and Mallory had some whoppers) was one of the books in the last years where Mallory felt she was a victim of sexism because the male teacher seemed to favor the boys over her. (Even though the more assertive girls were being called on.) I can’t remember for the life of me what the book was called, it’s been so long. In this class, the sixth grade Mallory was taking a six-week course on Children’s Literature. I’ve worked with sixth graders; what kind of books do you think they normally read at that age? But in Mallory’s class they were acting like this was all something they had moved on from a long time ago. To add insult to injury, she submits as her final assignment a research paper that one would expect to see written at a college level Child Development course and she still doesn’t get an A! Mallory Pike was Meg Griffin, before Meg Griffin.
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