We moved around a lot when I was a kid. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized how much that had affected me: not having those deep roots, not hanging out in the same schoolyards with the same kids, and always feeling a bit like I was on the outside, not quite able to read the room. I was easily stressed and fairly anxious, laughed too loudly, used big words, and didn't always pay attention. I went to the same Brownie troupe for a year and didn't know a single other girl's name. I didn't know how to ask.
But I was a terrific reader. I read a lot, returning again and again to the same series, often the same books, until I had passages memorized. I wanted to live in their lives, astral-project myself into the pages of my favourite books. I wanted to be their friends, date their brothers, crash their motorcycles. Some books I owned; some I checked out many times from the library. Some were lost in moves or to leaky cottage roofs or fires. Some were lost to the merciless urge to rid yourself of relics from your worst years.
***
Middle school was awful. I was bused to a collector school in another town—an hour in the morning, and an hour after school. In the first few weeks of grade six, I joined up with a group of girls from other elementary schools and for the first time in a long time, I had friends; by the time Halloween rolled around, something had changed, and I was out, baby. I wasn't allowed to sit with them, or talk to them. They made fun of me, my body, the way I spoke, and my confusion at their sudden cruelty. Because those girls were popular, others followed their lead; suddenly, I was the kid eating alone, the butt of jokes. Suddenly, I was the kid no one would talk to. I didn't know what my crime had been—a joke at the most popular girl's expense? A crush on the wrong boy? Did my boobs grow too fast that year?—but I was ostracized, persona non grata, and utterly marooned. The ones who rode on my bus put things in my hair, told me I smelled, kicked my backpack away from me. Written down, it sounds like nothing, it sounds like you could not be injured by this, but it was very bad.
This bullying went on for nearly two years, much of hidden from my parents until I was on the verge of collapse and wanting to die. Imagine that you are going through puberty and a friendship apocalypse at the same time. Imagine that you have acne for the first time and it is bloom, that you have braces and glasses and your hair has gone from softly straight to wildly frizzy, that your chest aches all the time. Imagine you know nothing about living in your own body; now imagine that your body has become a punch line to people you had considered friends. Imagine being bad at friendship in the first place. Now, not knowing what to say or how to say it is a life-ruining liability. Imagine being twelve years old and feeling utterly, completely, catastrophically alone.
In the intervening years, I've blocked out a lot of those middle school experiences. I remember the OJ Simpson verdict in 1995, someone listening on a contraband Walkman radio and then bursting into class, interrupting the teacher, to announce it: "Not guilty." I remember the South African girls whose parents made them wear long braids and long skirts. I remember Mark Bundy, small for his age, who would talk to me after all the other kids got off the bus, and I remember Kevin Jadayel, who teased me mercilessly as soon as he got on. I don't remember the names of the girls who shut me out. I don't remember the names of the teachers who watched it happen. I don't remember much.
***
What I remember is reading a lot of Baby-Sitters Club books. I loved them. I read Sweet Valley High and a lot of Paula Danziger as well, but the BSC had a special place in my heart: I, too, babysat my siblings. I lived in a little town near a big city (metropolitan Ottawa!). But the differences were actually the key bit: they had friendships; I did not.
I read them...a lot. For longer than I should have. I wanted to be carefree and sunny Dawn, or fashionable Stacey, or artistic Claudia. I was probably more aligned with reserved Mary Anne or bossy-ass Kristy. But they all loved each other, or liked each other, and even when they screwed up or flaked out or kept secrets, they stayed friends. This wasn't my experience: my friendships usually ended, either in that conflagration of abuse, or simply because we moved away. Here were girls who had been friends since they were babies, but who made a point of welcoming new friends. Here were girls who were humane.
There was the 1995 movie, which I owned on VHS. There was rumour of a TV adaptation, which I never saw (HBO in Canada in the 1990s was some serious satellite-TV rich-person shit), and there were endless, endless books. There were super-specials about ski trips and putting on a play; Dawn moved away; new members joined; Mary Anne had a boyfriend and Claudia's grandma died. But the whole point was that they were each other's constants. Their web of friendship held them in dark times. I wanted that so badly. I craved it. If I couldn't have it for myself, these books were a dreamworld I could enter when I needed.
***
It's become trendy to talk about wounds in pop psychology—the kind of thing you would see an Instagram meme about—and for me, those two middle-school years of friendship and identity rupture were a big goddamn deal. Even writing about it today makes me feel sweaty, as though someone is going to read that I was once bullied and start the whole circus up again. I almost never talk about it. Many close friends do not know this was something I went through. I feel ashamed of that part of my life. It left a huge scab on the part of my soul that deals with friendship.
In the intervening years, I have had that scab peeled off in a number of painful ways. I'm a human being with failings—I can be too direct, or make teasing jokes, and I struggle with jealousy—and I have had friendships end. In the aftermath, I've been made fun of. I've had former friends stalk me online. I've been left out of parties and fun things. And I've tried to let it all go, because I want there to be no wound. I want to be fine.
But I'm not fine. That part of me will always be tender.
The last few years have been really tough. Like most people in their 30s, I still have a hard time making friends—I worry about coming on too strong, or not strong enough, and I have no idea how to be like, "so, what are your top three traumas and do you like your parents?" I'd probably be fine with dating—after all, there's an expectation of intimacy in romance—but in friendship, without an anchor like being classmates or colleagues or roommates, I drift. In Covid, we can't spend enough time together to draw close, compounding the problem. What would normally be a weekly playdate with our kids, or a regular coffee date, has become a "next year in Jerusalem" sort of timeline. We have been on hold for so long that it's hard to know where to restart.
I'm lonely again. I crave friendship, again. I never really stopped, to be honest.
***
One of the things that got me through was the 2020 Netflix adaptation—now cancelled—of The Baby-Sitters Club. It is a very well-cast and well-written show, with very 2020 sensibilities (some very woke characters, some unexpected LGBTQ characters, et cetera), that has made me laugh out loud multiple times and covet several many outfits. And it's also just a really nice show. The stakes are fairly low. I don't feel stressed out when I watch it. The adult marriages are mostly okay. Alicia Silverstone plays a mom! I mean, it's just chill. We need more chill scripted TV these days. My nervous system is shot and I can only take so many baking shows, you know?
But it's also been an enormously healing show. Seeing these healthy middle-school friendships embodied on the screen has been such a balm for the part of me that still hurts, 26 years later. These girls seem to like each other. They're connected. No one is sitting alone at lunch. I love that. I need to see that, again and again, to train my brain to believe that it's possible.
The only other time in my life I've gotten as deep into a fictional universe as I did in middle school with the BSC was in 2018 with Harry Potter—a time when my life was falling to pieces, when I needed an escape hatch, and so I blasted myself into this alternate magic world. The BSC was another escape hatch, both then and now, and I think many of us desperately need more stories like it.
I know this is a lot to put on a show about teenage babysitters, but the
stories we come back to usually speak to a part of us that needs love. We need stories that heal us, that soothe us, that remind us that our stories aren't the only ones. Stories that remind us that friendship and love and connection are still possible.
