Ann Martin: Baby-Sitters Club 031

Before I tell you what went on at the meeting that day which, as it turned out, was the official beginning of the Pike Plague, only none of us knew that then, I'd better tell you a little about our club - how it runs and operates.

The BSC is really more a business than a club. As I mentioned earlier, Kristy thought it up. She got the idea for it way back at the beginning of seventh grade. That was before her mom had married Watson, when the Thomases still lived across the street from Claudia. In those days, Kristy, Sam, and Charlie took turns baby-sitting for David Michael after school. But, of course, a day came along when none of them was free to sit. Mrs. Thomas wasn't upset. She understood that kids have things to do. So she got on the phone to find a baby-sitter. Only that turned out to be a lot easier said than done. Kristy watched her make call after call. Even/one seemed to be busy. And that was when Kristy got her great idea. She thought it would be wonderful if her mother (or any parent) could make just one call and reach a whole bunch of sitters at once. So she decided to form a baby-sitting business in her neighborhood. She asked Mary Anne, Claudia, and Claudia's new friend Stacey to join her. The girls decided on club meeting times when people could call them to line up a baby-sitter. With four girls at each meeting, Kristy reasoned, one of them was bound to be free. So our clients would practically be guaranteed a sitter with just one phone call. And she was right. The club has been a huge success. Now there are seven of us sitters, plus two associate club members.

How do people know when and where to reach us? Because we advertise. As I've said, Kristy is an ideas person. In order to start the club, she and her friends placed a small ad in the Stoneybrook newspaper and stuck about a million fliers in people's mailboxes. (We still distribute fliers from time to time.) They also spread the news by word of mouth. You know - just telling people what they were doing. Well, the club caught on quickly. By the time I moved to Connecticut in January, the girls needed me as a new member because they had so much business. Later, they took on two associate members - Logan, and a friend of Kristy's named Shannon Kilbourne. The associate members don't come to meetings; they're backup people we can call on in case someone needs a sitter when all us club members are busy. Believe me, that happens sometimes. Anyway, then Stacey had to move back to New York, so we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal, and then Stacey returned to Connecticut, so of course we let her right back in the club. We needed her, and besides, we would never have told an original member that she couldn't be part of the club anymore. The club members are like sisters (or in Logan's case, he's like our brother).

What does each club member do? Well, I'll tell you, starting with Kristy, since she's the president. As our ideas person, Kristy figured out how the club would run and is always coming up with new plans. For instance, it was Kristy who decided that we should run a playgroup for awhile last summer, and that a nice Mother's Day gift for our clients (and for some of our own mothers) would be to take their kids off their hands and give them a day of freedom and relaxation. So we took a huge bunch of kids to a carnival on the Saturday before Mother's Day. Kristy was also the one who thought up Kid-Kits. Kid-Kits are boxes (we each have one) that we decorated and then filled with our old games, books, and toys, and a few new items such as coloring books, construction paper, and Magic Markers. We bring our kits along with us on some of our sitting jobs, and the kids adore them. There's just something about playing with other people's toys. . . . Anyway, because the children like the Kid-Kits, they like us, so their parents like us, and they're more apt to call the BSC again. I think Kristy will become a great businesswoman one day. Kristy's job, aside from getting good ideas, is to run the meetings, which she loves doing, because she likes being in charge.

Claudia, our VP, is the only one of us who has a phone in her room and her own personal phone number. This is great because it means we don't have to use a phone belonging to one of our parents - particularly while they might want to be using it. So we let Claud be VP, since we use her room and tie up her phone three times a week. Not to mention, eat her junk food.

The secretary of the club is Mary Anne, and boy is she good at it. I think she originally got the job because she has the tidiest handwriting of any of us. But she also turned out to be very organized, and thank goodness for that. Poor Mary Anne has the most complicated job of all. She's in charge of the club record book. That's where we keep track of all important information - our clients, their names and addresses, the money we earn, and most important, our sitting appointments. Mary Anne schedules everything on the appointment pages. In order to do this, she has to keep careful records, and also know, for instance, when Claud will be at an art class or Jessi at a ballet lesson or Mal at the orthodontist for her braces. Mary Anne has not made a single scheduling mistake.

Stacey is the treasurer, and she loves her job. For starters, she's a math whiz. She can empty out the money in our treasury (a manila envelope) and tell us how much is there practically just by looking at it. And she can add and subtract numbers in her head almost as fast as a computer could do it. (Well, I'm exaggerating a little, but she's a lot faster than any other club member.) Stacey's job is to collect club dues from us at every Monday meeting, to let us know if the treasury money is getting low, and to dole out money as we need it: to help pay Claud's monthly phone bill; to pay Charlie for driving Kristy to and from meetings, since she lives so far away now; to buy new things for the Kid-Kits; and to pay for an occasional sleepover or pizza party or something fun for the club! Stacey loves collecting money and hates parting with it. She keeps track of it in the record book and notes how we spend it.

I am the club's alternate officer, which is sort of like being a substitute teacher. It means I could take over the job of any other member who might have to miss a meeting. While Stacey was back in New York for that short time, I became the treasurer, but I was glad to give up the job when she returned. I'm not nearly as good at math as she is, and besides, everyone gets crabby when they have to pay their weekly dues. Even Kristy. I would much rather be the alternate officer. I get to do different jobs that way. I like the variety. But guess which job I've never been able to try - Kristy's. She has not missed one meeting. I'm dying to be president-for-a-day.

Jessi and Mal don't have actual jobs. "Junior Officer" means that they're allowed to babysit only after school and on weekend days. Their parents won't let them sit at night unless they're sitting for their own brothers and sisters. But believe me, two daytime-only club members are a big help. They free the rest of us up for nighttime jobs.

That's it for us BSC members. I guess the only other thing you need to know is that apart from the record book, Kristy makes us keep a club notebook. The notebook is more like a diary or journal. Each of us is responsible for writing up every single job we take, and then we're supposed to read the past week's entries to see what went on when our friends were sitting. Only Kristy and Mal actually like writing in the book, but we all admit that reading it is helpful. We see how our friends handled baby-sitting problems, and keep up with what's going on with the families we sit for regularly. It's always best to go to a job prepared - to know if a child is suddenly having nightmares or has developed a food allergy, anything like that.

Okay. So it was Monday and Claud's clock had hit five-thirty.