Here’s a thought: It only takes 40 seconds for your mind to be taken out of all of its current worry about pandemics, self-isolation, face-touching, hand-washing, and social-distancing to be transported to a simpler time when the Babysitter’s Club series by Ann M. Martin were the most important books you’ve ever read. Yeah, that moment might have been fleeting, and you soon moved on to novels with symbolism, complex character story lines, and plots that ended up on the AP exam. But! You never forgot that group of enterprising babysitters who really seemed to have it made in the late ’80s and ’90s.
Netflix
You can find that transformative 40 seconds in Netflix’s teaser for The Babysitter’s Club series, which premieres on July 3. The episodes are only 30 minutes long, and there are 10 of them, which means, if you put your mind to it, you could spend one full day in July pretending like you’re a member of that exclusive group of self-made teens.
The most important moment of this teaser is that the girls in the club have one of those clear phones where you can see all the colorful wires and gadgets. You know, that one your mom never let you have because it was you weren’t “old enough to have that kind of privacy?”
Yeah. One of those. But these teens also have iPhones, so it’s a little unclear why they need a phone that looks like it came from 2003. Everyone needs a professional landline, I guess. Anyway, somehow I’m 28 years old and still jealous of The Babysitter’s Club teens. Come July, I’m guessing I won’t be the only one alone in this discovery.