Today, I'm feeling a warm hint of nostaglia, so I'm going to write about a topic close to my childhood, jelly bracelets and pigtailed heart. It's about a land where some people are "easy" and have a bad rep if they go on dates every night, while it's okay for other people, where no one gets actual raped just "fake attempted rape", where parents don't care where their children are (even though in the past year they've been arrested, their friends have died, and they have been targeted by countless serial killers), and lawyer fathers know nothing of the actual law, and interior designer mothers, are clearly always high, where a pool push solves everything, where a bit of magic vodka kills a boyfriend, where it's not at all inappropriate to hang out after school, or have long personal talks with your english teacher (and Robert Redford look-a-like), where "Heroically Deaf" girls always have heart problems and OD the first time they do drugs, where people have evil twins, go in and out of comas, kidnapping, and blindness, and discover they have long lost siblings, (yet there is no teen sex or pregnancy) where blond haired, blue eyed size six twins are the ideal, even though one of the is a boring, interferring, busybody, a sixty year old in a sixteen year old's body, and the other is a sociopath (but we love her anyway), and where junior year of high school lasts about twenty years, and contains 50 spring breaks, summer vacations and christmases.
It's the world of SWEET VALLEY HIGH, the (now cult) ghostwritten book series credited to Francine Pascal, originally published in the eighties to mid-nineties. A child of the nineties myself, my vast SVH collection has been acclumulated from Goodwills (AT FIFTY CENTS APIECE!), and garage sales, and is broken out every summer for light, frothy, soap opera-ish books, a guilty pleasure to read floating in the pool.
When, I was about six or seven and i started to read SVH, i actually thought that that was what high school was like. I gave me such wildly unrealistic expectations! Here are some of the things that the super human Wakefield Twins (Jessica, who everyone thought needed mental help, and self- righteous St. Elizabeth, who actually did) and friends, experienced in the twenty, or so odd years of high school (of which I have yet to experience): (and yes, please excuse my naive 7 year old self for thinking that werewolves existed, but what can i say, I was a weird (read: superbly amazing) kid).
- I have yet to meet my evil twin, or even my evil twin's twin. So if your out there please e-mail me!
- I have never been in a coma and woke up with a different personality (except that one time...)
-To the best of my knowledge, I have never been stalked by a serial killer
- I sadly do not get fifty Christmases a year (when do these kids go to school?)
- On my trip to London, I did not run into any werewolves, or randomly help the Scotland yard solve a murder
- Nor, have I ever fallen deeply in love with a vampire (no, fictional does not count. Love you Edward! Why aren't you real?), and forgotten him by the end of the 3 part miniseries
- I have never been kidnapped, by an insane hospital orderly who only wanted to smell my hair and make me pancakes (I should be so lucky)
- In my town, new dive bars do not prop up, whenever they are convient
- I have never run away from home, and tried to get a job (read: whoring) in San Francisco
- My school never let us pretend to be married with egg or flour babies
- None of my friends' divorced parents have remarried after they pulled their own Parent Trap scam
- I also have yet to hear of the poorest kid in town, finding out in their mother's death bed confession, that he is actually a millionaire
- My parents didn't just leave wads on money on the kitchen table, and tell me to have a nice life. There a little thing called discipline and rules. Ned and Alice, you may have heard of them!
- When I tell a gigantic lie about something, such as knowing a famous person, it never actually turns out to be true, with no one ever knowing I lied (see how lucky you are Jess?)
- It's not as easy to get a role in a commercial/soap opera/movie/modeling job, as the Wakefield twins would have you believe
- Maybe it's more common than I think, but in at SVH, at least 5 high age couples, have gotten engaged
- If I tried to kill myself, because I didn't make the cheerleading squad, survived, and then was invited to join, i wouldn't want to
-In my experiences, car crashes/ plane crashes/motorcycle crashes/ ambulance crashes, are rare and do not occur whenever anyone warns you they may happen, or at the first opportunity anyone has to drive
-My school doesn't just take random trips into the desert and abandon us for three days
- There is no actual wrong side of the tracks!
- The Prince of some random european principality, does not just come to a school in the middle of no where, to live a normal life (but, then again, it's not just some random town, it;'s Sweet Valley!)
- Maybe it's just me, but if someone made fun of me about something, and i later became friends with their group of friends, i wouldn't just accept them and forget about it.
Thus is the insanity and mental/ moral back round (decay) of Sweet Valley High. It's like 50's Suburbia. Just watch one of those kids try to apply to university or get a job. Just watch... Welcome to the real world, baby.
I'm so sure, these books wouldn't get published today if they were new. But weirdly they're being "modernized" for the 2000's audience, which consists of giving the kids newer, more expensive cars, and making the twins Perfect Size Fours (....because, you know, size six is fat all of a sudden), additions of 'Oh My God', and 'This Sucks' (although keeping in Bruce and (pathetic) Todd's old man lingo), and there is now an anonmyous gossip blog (because news columns are so eighties?).
This is just messing, with a good/craptastic formula, in my humble opinon (I'm no St. Liz). No thanks! I'll just keep my torn, yellowed old school editions in my parent's basement with my memories. There's no need to mess with the Wakefields.
From Similar sarcasm and a laugh at how awesomely horrible, but amazing, these books are
go this amazing site: http://community.livejournal.com/1bruce1. (after the rich kid, Bruce Patman(the senior whose only friends seemed to be junior)'s porsche liscence plate, and later probably his plane, limo, helicopter and trophy wife). It's like obsesssive amazing and addictive.
Adieu, ma cheries,
Dream California and the glittering ocean tonight (the same pacific blue
as the wonder twins eyes).
And they'll all FALL FOR YOU.
And In the immortal words of Alice Wakefield (worst Mother in the world, 1980-1999),
it's 12:00 Lets get our Mimosa on!
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