A locked trunk and a secret diary all add up to...a mystery for the Baby-sitters!

The Baby-sitters Club #29: Mallory and the Mystery Diary

Oh, boy, I'm about to have to admit to something pretty darn embarrassing. Apparently, I didn't always realize what a dingbat Mallory Pike is. Why, you ask? Because when I read this book again, a memory that I've apparently long suppressed came rushing back to me. Mallory opens this book prattling away in her journal. Her final line was "If only I were 13 instead of 11. Life would be a picnic." I totally stole that line! I thought it was hilarious. To be fair, I was maybe 8, tops. More likely I was 6 or 7 (I was a very advanced reader. No, seriously, I was. By the time I was 10, I read Gone with the Wind, Little Women, and Pride and Prejudice all for the first time.)

But anyway, here's what happened: I remember sitting in our basement playroom at home, mad about something, and I decided to make a "Hate List" as this was before I actually had a proper journal. So I took a piece of paper, labeled it "My Hate List" and wrote a list of things I hated, ending with "Not having Christmas at Grandma's." I don't remember any of the other things on the list. Anyway, I wrote all the things on my list and then added the line "If I only I were 13, life would be a picnic." And of course, my nosy mother found my list, laughed at it (Thanks a lot, Mom. Maybe if you'd taken me seriously as a kid, I wouldn't have felt the need to move across the country. Think about that the next time you start harping on me for my life choices) and then was like "What is this about being 13? Where on earth did you come up with that?" so I had to show her this book and then she laughed some more and then she showed my relatives my hate list, like it was just so funny, and I HATE being laughed at (I bet that was on the list!) and wow! I clearly have some residual anger, so I'm just going to move on into the book before it becomes even more blatantly obvious once again that perhaps reliving my childhood through BSC books is not the best idea, and it might be more prudent for me to relive my childhood with the help of a competent and licensed therapist.

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.