Welcome to Babysitters Club Dr.

Back when I was a kid, I loved nothing more than to make long lists of families and their children. One of my best ones started with me taking a deck of cards and dividing them as a variety of great grandchildren of one family. (The four daughters had married men named, originally, Heart, Club, Diamond and Spade.)

So it seems natural that I aged up the BSC and gave them all families. Before I even started that, I had a whole story in place. The members of the BSC had continued the club all the way through high school and college (naturally). After they graduated, they turned the club into a business franchise. They provided training to men and women, who ran franchises across the country. Each franchise charged dues to girls, trained them in CPR, infant care and more, and gave them ideas for how to help with homework, fun projects for kids to do, and how to put together Kid Kits. It then worked like the Babysitters Agency: phone calls would come in to a dispatch, and callers were connected to a babysitter or club in their local area. Once parents had a sitter or club they liked, they contacted them directly. Pretty neat, huh?

Of course, with all the money they were making, the BSC was able to build their own subdivision full of nice houses. The eight girls who were in the club at the time (the original seven, plus Shannon) all lived together on one street called Babysitters Club Dr. They were all married and had at least two children. None of them had ever been divorced or widowed and they were all happy, of course.

I wish I still had the list of the children of the BSC. I only remember a couple of the things about it. First, I had just read the name Araceli, so I decided to use it for one of the children. Only, when I wrote up the list, I accidentally wrote Kristy's daughter was named Araleci instead.

Mary Anne was, of course, married to Logan. They had a daughter named Tabitha (and there is a whole crazy story behind her. I remember it because it was so nuts) and a set of twins. The boy was Logan Jr. (naturally) and the girl, Meaghann. Megan was my favorite name at the time, and I had met girls named Meagan, Meghan and Megann, so I was trying to be creative. If I were trying to make the name as kre8tif as possible these days, she would have ended up Meaghynne.

And the best of all...Shannon was married to a man named, I think, Oliver. In any case, their son was also a junior, so they called him...wait for it...O.J. To top it all off, his younger sister was named...Orangina. I am sure I came up with this because in the early 90s, hearing O.J. made you think of orange juice rather than Simpson.

Someday, maybe I'll stop being embarrassed long enough to tell you the whole story of Tabitha.