Rereading My Childhood: The Baby-Sitters Club

#10: Logan Likes Mary Anne!

My first boyfriend was in first grade. His name was Michael. We went into the corner of the school and held hands and kissed. After a glorious week, we parted ways amicably. You could call it a "conscious uncoupling." He married a friend of mine a week later in a beautiful playground ceremony. I was there, and I was happy for them.

Mary Anne's first boyfriend isn't as frivolous as mine, but I'm not sure how typical Mary Anne's first boyfriend experience is to others. I've heard horror stories from my fellow women – their first boyfriend treated them like shit, or cheated on them, or myriad other dumb things teenage (and, let's be honest, adult) boys do to girls. This book and Logan had me in its clutches, right up until the end, when Logan lost me with one cliche.

SPOILERS AFTER THE COVER!!!

My copy of The Baby-Sitters Club #10: Logan Likes Mary Anne! Oh, Logan. Let's ditch this broad and run away together! I'll get my hand stuck in a jar. You'll get it out. It will be our thing!

The Baby-Sitters Club #10: Logan Likes Mary Anne! starts with a recap, like on X-Men: The Animated Series when Cyclops told that Storm is missing and with the Morlocs. Previously, on The Baby-Sitters Club: Dawn has a secret passage! Kristy's mom got married! Claudia's grandmother, Mimi, had a stroke! (Complete with Mary Anne mentioning Mimi's accent. It's not that big a deal, Martin. This is coming from someone whose mother has an accent.) Stacey had a crush!

During the last BSC meeting before eighth grade, the girls gush over a Sixteenmagazine (a parody of Seventeen magazine) with Cam Geary, Mary Anne's object of affection, on the cover. Apparently, young Geary is dating a 14-year-old girl with the ridiculous name Corrie Lalique. "She too old for him," Stacey protested. Yeah, Lalique, get out of here, ya' old maid, make way for Stacey and the other 12-year-olds.

Mary Anne carefully takes his poster out of the magazine and does something utterly disgusting with it on the first day of eighth grade:

My lunch money was in my purse, the photo of Cam Geary was folded and ready to be displayed in my locker. (That was what the gum was for. You're not allowed to tape things up in the lockers of Stoneybrook Middle School, so a lot of kids get around that rule by sticking them up with bits of freshly chewed gum.)

That is worse than tape! It's just tape! I'd rather have tape and tape residue than bits of chewed gum straight from some tween's maw. Stoneybrook Middle School should reevaluate their tape policy.

At lunch, the BSC sit together, a departure from their disparate seventh-grade arrangement. This is where Mary Anne meets her Romeo.

I saw Trevor Sandbourne, one of Claudia's old boyfriends from last year. I saw the Shillaber twins, who used to sit with Kristy and Dawn and me. They were sitting with the only set of boy twins in school. (For a moment, I thought I had double vision.) I saw Eric and Shawna from homeroom. And then I saw Cam Geary.

I nearly spit out a mouthful of milk.

"Stacey!" I whispered after I managed to swallow. "Cam Geary goes to our school! Look!"

All my friends turned to look. "Where? Where?"

"That boy?" said Stacey, smiling. "That's not Cam Geary. That's Logan Bruno. He's new this year. He's in my homeroom and my English class. I talked to him during homeroom. He used to live in Louisville, Kentucky. He has a southern accent."