Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 027

How do parents know when to call us? Well, I'll go back to the beginning and tell you how the club started. Then you can find out for yourself.

Kristy is the one who thought up the Babysitters Club. (That's the main reason she's the president.) See, way back at the start of seventh grade, Kristy and her family were still living next door to me and across the street from Claud. Kristy's little brother, David Michael, was six then, and Kristy and her two older brothers, Sam and Charlie (they're in high school), were responsible for baby-sitting for him most of the time, since Mrs. Thomas (well, now she's Mrs. Brewer) has a full-time job. But the day came when Kristy's mom needed a sitter for one particular afternoon, and nobody - not Kristy, not Sam, not Charlie - was free. So she got on the phone and began making call after call, in search of a sitter. That was when Kristy got her great idea. What a waste of time, she thought, for her mom to have to make so many calls. Wouldn't it be easy if she could make one call and reach several sitters? Surely one of them would be free.

That was it! Kristy would get together with several of her friends, we would meet a few times a week, and when someone called, one of us was bound to be free for a job. So the caller was practically guaranteed a sitter. Kristy asked Claudia and me to be in her club. When we decided we needed one more member, Claud introduced us to Stacey McGill, a new friend of hers. Stacey and her parents had just moved to Stoneybrook from New York City. We liked Stacey right away and asked her to join. Then we did some advertising so people would know about our sitting service and how to reach us. And soon we were in business. Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and I became the first president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary of the Baby-sitters Club.

By the time Dawn moved here, we were doing so much business that we wanted her in the club, too, and when Stacey had to move back to New York, we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal. So our club has grown to six people. Actually, if s seven people as far as I'm concerned. Stacey isn't really gone; she's just the New York branch of the Baby-sitters Club! Kristy runs the club in a very businesslike manner. She insists that's the only way to do things. And so we keep a club record book and a club notebook. The record book is really important. It's full of information. As secretary, it's my job to keep track of our clients' names and addresses and stuff like that, and also to schedule all of our sitting jobs on the appointment pages. And Dawn, as treasurer, keeps track of our money in the record book, too.

The notebook is something that most of us don't like too much. In the notebook, we have to write up every single job we go on. Then we're responsible for reading the notebook once a week to see what's happened when our friends were sitting. I have to admit that finding out how other people handle sitting problems is helpful . . . but, boy, do we get tired of writing in that book.

It was one of Kristy's ideas, though, and that's another reason she's president. She's always coming up with new projects or ideas to keep the club fresh. For instance, Kristy dreamed up Kid-Kits. Kid-Kits are decorated boxes filled with games and toys and books - mostly our old things. Each of us has made a Kid-Kit. Whenever I take mine on a sitting job, the kids are thrilled. For some reason, another person's toys are always more interesting than your own. So the kids are happy and their parents are happy, and when parents are happy, they call our dub again! Kid-Kits are good for business.

As vice-president, Claud's job is ... well, she doesn't exactly have a job. She's the vice-president because she has her very own phone and private phone number, so her room is a good place for us to hold our meetings. We don't have to tie up anyone's line three times a week. Claud is really nice about letting us use her things and eat her junk food.

You already know what my job is about. I keep records and schedule sitting jobs. In order to do that, I have to know when Claud's art lessons are, Jessi's ballet classes, Mal's orthodontist appointments (she just got braces), and that sort of thing. Sometimes I complain about my job, but mostly I like it.

Dawn took over the office of treasurer when Stacey moved away. Her job is to collect dues money from us club members every Monday and to make sure we always have enough money in our treasury. We use the treasury money to buy new things for the Kid-Kits (crayons, coloring books, anything that gets used up), to pay Kristy's brother Charlie to drive her to and from meetings now that she lives on the other side of town, and to treat ourselves to a sleepover or a party every now and then.

Our junior officers, Jessi and Mallory, don't have actual jobs. "Junior" means that since they're younger than the rest of us, they aren't allowed to sit at night, unless they're sitting for their own brothers and sisters. They're a big help, though. They take a lot of the after- noon jobs, which frees us older club members to take the evening jobs.

Last but certainly not least, there are Logan and Shannon. Logan and Shannon are associate members. That means that they don't come to meetings, but we can call on them if a job comes up that none of the rest of us is free to take. Believe it or not/ this happens. And we'd hate to have to tell one of our clients that we couldn't provide her (or him) with a sitter. Shannon Kilbourne, by the way, is a friend of Kristy's. She lives across the street from her in Kristy's new neighborhood.

On the day I went toy-shopping for Tigger, Kristy had just barely called the meeting to order when the phone rang.

We looked at each other and smiled. A job call so early in a meeting must be a good sign.

Claudia reached for the phone, a plastic charm bracelet dangling from her wrist. "Hello, Baby-sitters Club," she said. There was a pause. Then she put her hand over the receiver. "Oh, Mary A-anne," she called to me in a singsong voice, "it's for you-ou." I took the phone, glancing at Kristy. She doesn't like us to get personal calls during meetings.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hi!" replied a cheerful voice.

Logan! I was really happy to hear from him. I just hoped he was calling about business.

"What's up?" I asked him.

"I need a sitter." Actually, he said, "Ah need a sittuh." (Logan's family moved here from Louisville, Kentucky, not long ago.) "For Kerry and Hunter?" I asked. Kerry is Logan's nine-year-old sister and Hunter is his five-year-old brother. None of us has baby-sat for them before, because Logan always does it.

"Yeah. It's for this Saturday afternoon. Mom and Dad have some tennis thing lined up with friends of theirs, and I'm going to baseball practice at school. I was supposed to sit, but then practice came up. Can one of you do it?" I was dying to do it, of course, but I had to treat this job like any other. "I'll check our schedules and call you back in just a few minutes, okay?" "Okay." This is how we handle club jobs. The person who gets the phone call or who answers the phone never just takes a job. It's open for everyone.

I told the others about the job as I looked at the appointment pages in the record book. "Well," I said, "Kristy, you and Mallory and I are free." My friends were very generous and let me take the job. I called Logan back. "What's all that sneezing I hear?" I asked, after I'd told him that I would be the sitter.

"Oh, it's my brother. It's allergy season." "Poor Hunter," I replied, remembering his bare, dust-free bedroom. "He - "I stopped. I had glanced at Kristy. Her eyeballs were practically falling out of her head in her effort to get me to end my personal conversation.

So I said good-bye quickly. Our meeting continued. When it was over, I dashed out the door, calling good-bye to Claudia's grandmother Mimi, who replied in confusion, "I will take six, please." Then I ran home to play with Tigger.