Tigger, come home!

The Baby-sitters Club #25: Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger

I know I’ve made it clear before that I’m not an animal person, so I’m just going to assume that losing a cat is this traumatic. Because sweet Peaches, the way MA carries on, you’d think she just lost her only remaining parent. Although actually, considering that parent is Richard, she probably wouldn’t care that much.

So MA is totally obsessed with her cat, and I think we can all see foreshadowing of her future as a crazy spinster cat lady once Logan finally comes out of the closet his sophomore year of college. She lets him (Tigger, not Logan) play outside one Friday afternoon while she goes to a BSC meeting, then comes home and can’t find him. Quelle horror! She freaks out and runs all over the house looking for him, then Richard comes home and indulges her paranoia for a few minutes by helping her look outside with flashlights (really? They need flashlights at 6:30 pm at a time of year when it’s warm enough in Connecticut to ride bikes and sit outside all afternoon? I call bullshit. Also, even if it is dark, don’t they have outdoor lighting and streetlights? Are “torches that could light up New York City” really necessary? No.) Finally Richard is all “MA, I don’t care about your cat anymore. Get inside and fix me dinner.” Except not in so many words. He’s just like “I’m sure the kitten is fine. He’s been missing for less than 2 hours. Back to your lives, citizens.”

Mary Anne has a crush-- on a boy baby-sitter!

The Baby-sitters Club #10: Logan Likes Mary Anne!

Eh, Logan. You could do better.

Well, it's the first day of the BSC's interminable 8th grade year and guess who Mary Anne spies across the crowded cafeteria? None other than her new celebrity crush, Cam Geary. Except, wait!, Stacey tells her, that's not Cam Geary. That's Logan Bruno, recnet transplant from Louisville, Kentucky (that would be Loovull, as we are treated to some delightful stereotyping of Logan's accent.) MA's heart is all aflutter.

The BSC has a huge influx of business thanks to some recent adertising, and it's getting to be too much for them to handle. Logan eavesdrops on their convo at lunch one day, and announces that he used to do a lot of baby-sitting. Mostly, this seems like a ploy to be able to oome sit by the tongue-tied Mary Anne. The BSC invites him to come to one of their meetings.

When is Mary Anne's bad luck going to end?

The Baby-sitters Club #17: Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery

I don't really get Halloween. I mean, I enjoy a good masquerade ball as much as the next girl (actually, I've never been to a masquerade ball, but I have no doubt that I would enjoy it very much, should I ever achieve my dream of travelling back to 1868 and actually getting to attend one.) And of course, I like candy far more than I probably should. What don't I like? Any day that exhorts the vast majority of the world's children to act even more like spoiled, entitled little brats than they normally do any day of the week. Any day where I am encouraged, nay, expected to dress up like Donatella Versace and squeeze into a subway car shared with a gorilla, 6 women wearing pointy black hats, and a fat guy in an orange sweatsuit who I think is supposed to be a pumpkin, but might just be a fat guy with very little fashion sense. Any day where the grocery store cashier ringing up my loaf of bread and 12-pack of Diet Coke is likely to be wearing any of the above costumes. Halloween is when the freaks come out. And I have very little patience with freaks.

But here we have arrived at a BSC Halloween, no doubt the first of many in their never-ending 8th grade year (actually, I can't think of any others at this moment, but given that they went to SMS for, like, 15 years, I'd say it's probably a pretty safe bet they celebrated other Halloweens!) Mary Anne receives a chain letter saying she and her family and friends will have bad luck if she breaks the chain. Jessi and Mal are terrified, but no one else really gives a shit. Mary Anne throws the letter away.