It’s a lucky day here at the Dairi Burger, because I recently uncovered a fantastic cultural artifact: an agenda from a Sweet Valley High PTA meeting.
SVH PROUD GLADIATOR PARENTS MEETING
October 25, 19931. Welcome!
2. Update on annual fundraiser: Father-Daughter Date Auction. Fathers, start prepping your daughters to auction off to the fathers! Highest bidder wins a free membership to the Country Club!
3. Beware of the town drunk. He’s been showing up at the school and peeing in our perfectly manicured, size-six bushes.
4. The vote was unanimous: Yom Kippur will be canceled this year, and we will have two Spring Breaks instead, so that our students can have more than one kooky vacation adventure.
5. Scoliosis screenings will begin this week. Mr. Collins has graciously volunteered to conduct the screenings.
6. The Wakefield twins took a shit this morning. It was so lovely and perfect and slender, we will have it on display at the school for all to admire.
My main motivation for reading this one is: what is the motivation for Cara to wear that sailor suit? Although it is kind of cute. Steven also looks like Christopher Reeve. And 37.
So Tricia died recently, aka about 20 books ago, and Steven is pretty crushed. He often gets together with Betsy, Tricia’s sister, to talk about Tricia and look at old pictures. If you remember, Betsy and Tricia’s dad is the town drunk. Recently, Steven has been having fun with Cara Walker, former gossip and Jessica’s friend. See, Cara has changed. Her parents got a divorce so she knows what it is like to lose someone. I don’t want to play who hurts more, but is a divorce the same as a teenager dying of cancer? I would say no. Stop making Cara out to be a saint.
Steven feels guilty for liking Cara because he feels he is being disloyal to Tricia. So he struggles with that and keeps being an ass to Cara. Cara takes it because she has always had a crush on Steve. They do date-y things like go on a picnic at the zoo (huh?) and go to the Village Inn and eat the early bird special and dance to the cheesy band. Meanwhile, Steven’s friend Artie Western(yes, his real name). And yay! We’ve identified another senior at SVH! So far he and Bruce are the only seniors at the school, apparently. Cara doesn’t want to compete with a ghost, she dumps Steven’s whiny ass.
Steven mopes around long enough for Jessica to spout the most insightful thing she has ever said. She tells him that he should go for Cara, because the advantage she has over Tricia is that “she’s still alive.” Steve gets super peeved, but that wakes him up. The twins trick them into meeting and he and Cara walk into the sunset together.
Oh yea. Elizabeth, as the fucking patron saint, pays a visit to Betsy and asks her to let Steven go and to let him have a life. Because Liz has wisdom far beyond her years. It is so fucking condescending and classist, because as Liz travels to Betsy’s house on “the wrong side of town”:, suddenly the streets are lined with filth. Wasn’t Sweet Valley supposed to be perfect? I’ll bet there is one street where the Martins, David Prentiss, and Roger Barrett’s mom lives. Because if you don’t live the typical waspy, rich lifestyle in Sweet Valley, you live in squalor and filth. No in-between.
Secondary story: Jess hears that Winston’s cousin is coming to visit and is a big time Hollywood producer. So she signs up to do a project with him so she can meet this visiting cousin. It is uber creepy how she keeps inviting herself over to hang around with him and the adults are okay with that. Turns out Jess heard wrong and he is a really a civil engineer working on waste disposal. Hahaha, how hilarious, Jessica is once again a manipulative sociopath with no regard for anyone’s feelings but her own. I feel like this storyline has been used a dozen times already. And how when the twins are secondary characters, there always seem to be a really bad attempt at a humorous storyline.
Oh, and this one got really Saved By the Bell on us. SVH is playing a charity volleyball game with another school, and of course the team to represent is Liz, Jess, Ken, Bruce, Lila and some others. Isn’t that basically the whole school? The opposing team has a Todd lokkalike that Liz goes gaga for but it turns out he’s pretty chauvinist and nothing like Todd. The moral? Stop living in the past and move on! Also, Todd’s a tool!
Steven reeeeaaaaallllyyy needs to not hang out with high school students anymore. It’s becoming borderline pathetic.
The Dairi Burger 
omg, you’re PTA agenda is hysterical!
I remember how Liz kept messing up playing the volleyball game and it seemed like SVH was going to lose — gasp! — but Jessican convinved the team (of all SVH students that matter) to let her and Liz do their little fake-out/tease move, so SVH could win the game. And even though Liz had played like a total flake up to that point, they let her! Probably because she’s a size 6 and has blue-green eyes.
Betsy Martin was such a bitch in this book! I understand how she feels about her sister but geez, let the poor guy get on with his life. If I were Cara, I would have told her to fuck off. But that’s just me.
That PTA agenda makes me die. XD
I think I read this book once and never bothered again because whiny Steven got really boring after awhile.
Forgot about that B-plot. Um, how do “Hollywood producer” and “civil engineer” (which will forever remind me of William Hung, just so you know) sound the same? Lllllllllllllllame.
And I never realised until you mentioned it how much time Steven spent with high school kids. Make some friends your own age, for God’s sake!!!
I just reread this one – turns out Winston’s other uncle was a big-time hollywood producer and had to fly to Europe to shoot a movie..
Also I may be wrong but wasn’t it Jessica who said that bitchy line about Cara at least being alive?
ugh i’m so over tricia. honestly, she is the most annoying dead person in the series. one book about steven getting over her is fine, but there are like, six books with that exact same plot. move on, buddy. and get some friends your own age.
Oy. This one kinda hurt. Oh they all hurt, who am I kidding? The best thing was the PTA meeting notes that you posted! Thank you for that, that was seriously great.
No joke Steven looks 37 years old. Good grief. And just how long is Cara’s neck? Whoa.
PS do you think it’s CAR-a, or Care-a?
kiwimusume:
I think it was a completely different cousin. The one who was a producer ended up not coming and the one who was an engineer came instead, but no one bothered to tell Jessica. Karma at its finest.
I remember crying a little during this one and crying A LOT while reading Tricia’s Ghost. Is that what it’s called? Tricia is all ethereal and red-haired on the cover. Your blog rules.
Okay, this is the one I meant to comment on. That bulletin was fan-fucking-tastic!
I’ve been laughing nonstop for ten minutes over the PTA agenga. THANK YOU.
Err, agenda.
This is very late but I just wanted to mention that you forget the best part of the book. That’s when Elizabeth is preaching about how wrong Cara is for Steven and Steven basically tells her to shut up and stop being so self righeous! I wish that happened more often!
I love your description of the twin poo as ‘slender.’ The perfect capping adjective for that triad.
Steve looks like Bruce Campbell in the first Evil Dead movie
“Sometimes Alice was amazed at how identical her pretty twins were.”
Well, duh! They are identical twins…
Wait, so the twins took a joint shit? Maybe they have more in common than long sun-streaked blond hair and sparking blue-green eyes and perfect size-six figures and blah blah blah . . .
The double entendre with the “Beware of the town drunk. He’s been showing up at the school and peeing in our perfectly manicured, size-six bushes.”
iheatewheat…. you are my idol.
why can noone look at each other in the eye on the covers?? they’re always looking in other directions like cross eyed love birds to display their dissaproval/depression/homicidal tendencies. is there any cover with eye contact?