what would jessica wakefield do?

Somehow Katie and I ended up discussing Sweet Valley High over the hummus basket at Thinking Man on Friday night, and the Wakefield sisters have been haunting me ever since.

Today I decided to Google the twins and see what they've been up to all these years. Wouldn't you know, they're going to re-release the series all over again. Now, the SVH books have had a coat of paint slapped on them a time or two, they've changed up the covers with a new photo or font, but it seems that since 1983, the world has changed radically enough that although the premise of SVH remains timeless - we all want to be twins, backstabbing gets you everwhere, there's nothing like a good catfight, new outfit, case of mistaken identity, beauty pageant, coma, substance abuse issue, etc. etc. - the subtler details, such as technology and fashion can get in the way of a good story. So the publishers have gone in and tweaked things a bit. The car the twins share has been changed from a Fiat Spider to a Jeep. Granted, I had no idea what the fuck a Fiat was when I was 10 years old anyways, I think I had to look it up. I'm sure the kids have cell phones and text instead of passing notes (do they pass notes these days?). Oh, right, and rememberhow Jessica and Elizabeth were a "perfect size six"? Well, now they are a "perfect size four". I realize sizes have changed, I realize the size 14 Marylin Monroe supposedly wore and the one made today aren't the same thing. However, why not, if we're modernizing things, just remove the reference altogether? Save our girls some purging and self loathing, shall we?

Regardless, I did not realize until today how much latent Sweet Valley trivia and storylines I have been carrying around in my brain all of these years. For example, I remembered that Elizabeth's boyfriend was Todd and her best friend's name is Enid (um, yeah, thanks Mom and Dad), who used to have a drinking problem. Jessica numerous boyfriends (i.e., she was kind a loose woman for her age), but mainly chased after the dashing yet dangerous Bruce Patterson, who sometimes had a moustache and sometimes did not. The basic plot device was that there was the "good" twin (usually Elizbeth) and the "bad" twin (usually Jessica). Jessica usually did something impulsive and got herself in over her head, and Elizabeth had to bail her out of some pickle or another. The girls were foils to one another, one twin poised and methodical to a fault, the other spontaneous, but the kind of girl who jumps without thinking about where she's going to land.

I was a voracious consumer of these books as a kid. Some of the sexual undertones of a few of the books were a little beyond me, and there was one book in particular called Playing with Fire where Bruce totally went to second base with Jessica that totally was more action than I had ever read, seen, or would experience for a good five years. But I had my collection lined up on my pink wooden bookshelf in my bedroom. I have this mental picture of my bedroom when I was eleven, beige pile carpet, and the lavender paint I picked out to match my peach and purple bedspread. I had the same bedspread as Kelly Kapowski on Saved by the Bell and I was very proud of that. No one was getting to second base on that bedspread.

Every time we went to the bookstore I went straight for the young adult section to see if there was a new volume of Sweet Valley High (or Sweet Valley Twins, or The Baby Sitters Club, whatever, I had to get my fix, y'all). I must have had at least a hundred, maybe more. Amanda stopped me today from ordering about ten of my favorites from Amazon. "Three," she said, "you're allowed to buy three at a time." I appreciate her stopping me from excessively purchasing books from my childhood.

Katie asked me today if I thought I was more of an Elizabeth or a Jessica. She thinks she is a mixture of both. I would agree. I think I am probably more of an Elizabeth, a planner, methodical, you know how I like to color code things on my calendar. I think I could stand to be a little more impulsive, a little less look, a little more leap. Perhaps I could learn some lessons from Sweet Valley.

Read The Dairi Burger, a blog by someone who knows way more about Sweet Valley than me.