Rereading My Childhood: The Baby-Sitters Club

#27: Jessi and the Superbrat

I like k-pop, and because I like k-pop, I am inundated with emails and Tweets about contests to win five minutes with your favorite idol. I get articles about how to conduct yourself during a fan meet. A friend of mine sends me videos of k-pop stars surprising fans.

And they all fill me with dread. Unlike most people, I have no desire to meet celebrities, especially celebrities I like. I once met Paula Poundstone after one of her shows because my sister wanted to get her CD signed, and I just stood to the side and said nothing with a doofy grin on my face. I do not stay after the concert in hopes of catching a glimpse of the tour bus. When the podcasters say they're going to a bar down the street, I take it as a sign to go the opposite direction. A convention advertisement featuring the opportunity to meet someone from Star Trek? Absolutely not. The most celebrity interaction I want is a Tweet they never see.

But why am I like that? Why don't I want to meet people whose work I appreciate? Is it because I don't want to make a fool of myself? Maybe a little, but I don't think I'm going to impress them. The reason I don't want to meet celebrities is that I enjoy that piece of societal glass that separates us. You stay over there and I'll stay over here. Thank you for your work, but we don't have to have a personal interaction. I'm clearly projecting my need to avoid people onto celebrities.

That's certainly not the case in Stoneybrook. A TV star is returning home and he happens to live in Stoneybrook and he's a kid, so you know what that means! The mother gets an au pair. After all, she can afford it because her kid is a television star. I'm kidding. The BSC drove out the Au Pair Club in the brutal Stoneybrook Childcare Wars.

Becca's favorite show, P.S. 162, is airing, so the whole family gathers to make fun of Becca's crush on the black kid on the show, Lamont. The show revolves around a group of young kids in school. I thought the show was some kind of '80s Degrassi: The Next Generation (so, Degrassi Junior High), but the existence of a laugh track makes me think it's more akin to the classroom scenes in Boy Meets World. (Unfortunately, it seems that family sitcoms replaced school sitcoms by the time I was watching TGIF, so I couldn't think of a single non-drama school television show. Also, Welcome Back, Kotter is way before my time and I don't know if it was a sitcom or if it has a laugh track. I'm under the impression that every show from the '70s is a cop drama.)

While watching the program, our attention is brought to a character named Waldo, who is a nerd with crazy hair. The Minkus of P.S. 162. I hope he has a backup plan because he's going to disappear after season two. Anyway, it turns out that a Stoneybrook native, Derek Masters, plays Waldo, and he might be coming back.

At the BSC meeting, Jessi introduces us to all the members, and it's time for this episode's "What's Claudia Wearing?"

She had two French braids pulled back and wound into one. She's also a wild dresser. At the meeting she was wearing a bright pink T-shirt, a short red flouncy skirt, and underneath the skirt she had on black footless tights that she had rolled up to mid-calf.

It's not that wild. This is relatively normal by today's standards. Why she didn't just get Capri tights, I don't know. It's not the craziest outfit I've seen her wear, so I'll give it a 3/10.

The meeting continues with usual club business until Mrs. Masters calls. Jessi is the only one free, so she eagerly takes the job, excited to meet television's Waldo and "get involved with show biz." If Jon Peters can go from hairdresser to megaproducer, babysitter to actress is a reasonable trajectory. The only problem is that Peters was in Los Angeles and Jessi is in a city that, if you remember #26: Claudia and the Sad Good-bye, has never seen a kimono before.