It’s easy to ascribe your troubles to an unseen force. Toss your problems to the wind — there’s nothing you can do to change your luck, so you better just suck it up and ride it out! It’s even easier to say that it’s because of bad luck…

I wish I knew about linguistics when I was eighteen. Maybe if I had known about linguistics when I was eighteen, I wouldn’t have entered university as a Computer Science Major, instead of an English major. It took me a college dropout and ten years later to learn…

Being a kid sucks. There. I said it. No “Cult of the Child” Victorian bullshit here. You don’t get to do all the great things that adults get to do: stay up late, eat whatever you want, drive, go shopping, pay bills, get insurance, look at stock options, cut…

There’s no point in trying to conceal my bias — I think child beauty pageants are creepy and gross. I don’t like the idea of forcing children to compete against one another for really no reason. They’ll have enough competition in their futures. However, I don’t blame the children…

My experience with summer camp comes exclusively from friends, horror movies, and that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa and Bart go to Camp Krusty. …

I don’t understand kids and I certainly don’t understand babysitting. There. I said it. I read these books, but I could never babysit now, so babysitting when I was twelve is especially out of the question. (I thought wearing all black on Valentine’s Day was a clear message to…

Separation is difficult, especially when you’re a child and another city might as well be another country. If your best friend moves to another city, it’s not like you can just jump in your car and see her. More so twenty years ago before text messaging and video chat…

A few years ago, after learning that my partner’s parents took him to Disneyland while he was a baby, my partner and I decided to take a trip to Disneyland. I went when I was eight, but I hadn’t been back since. In the months leading up to the…

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…

I wasn’t there when my childhood pet died. His name was Sammy, and he was a gorgeous Australian Shepherd. He died while my family and I were abroad, visiting my extended family in the Philippines. My father had to sit my sister and me down and explain that our…

Hey! Hey you! I see you there, browsing the internet while 12-year-olds steal income through babysitting. Why would people choose a 12-year-old over a capable adult like yourself? Those 12-year-olds have something you don’t — The Baby-Sitters Club Notebook. For today only, its secrets will be revealed and you…

The neighborhood kids once feared me. When I strolled up and down the street with my dark clothes, fortune-telling paraphernalia, and a book of spells under my arm, kids made way for me, for they knew they were in the presence of a powerful individual. At any moment, my…

Complete candor upfront — growing up, I had a difficult time relating to Stacey McGill. I had something in common with every other babysitter. I was Asian American and a daydreamer like Claudia Kishi and a west coast girl like Dawn Schafer. I had the responsibility of Kristy Thomas…

I have a sister. She’s one of my loyal readers. She’s also younger than me. When we were kids, she was active, popular, artistic, and had an effortlessly cool style. I was always more withdrawn with my nose behind a book, an unwillingness to talk to people, and a…

So far, I have written all of these retrospectives before Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club series has aired. Those reviews, even the ones that came out after the show, were written without any knowledge about the new series and how it would change (and, in most cases, improve) on the…

Sometimes I wonder how people function. I mean, how specific people function. They always ask you for a pen, as if the idea that they might have to take notes in class was sprung on them that day. When they arrive at the register, they have to dig through…

At one time, I was just collecting and reading The Baby-Sitters Club. I was going to Goodwill every two weeks, buying whichever books in the series I was missing. Then I’d go home and read one every once in a while. Sometime during Claudia and Mean Janine, I got…

At one time, I was just collecting and reading The Baby-Sitters Club. I was going to Goodwill every two weeks, buying whichever books in the series I was missing. Then I’d go home and read one every once in a while. Sometime during Claudia and Mean Janine, I got…

One of the most deplorable things people can do is convince someone to give up their life savings in exchange for quack medical cures. People will do anything to save their lives, and it’s unconscionable to take advantage of their situations. The American health care system already takes advantage…

I’m conflicted when it comes to incredibly strict parents. My parents were pretty hands-off when it came to my sister and me — as long as we got good grades, we were allowed to do almost anything we wanted without too much parental oversight. I firmly believe that this…