This article is a part of the Half-Light ‘Forks in Fiction’ series.

When I was a child, I packed a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich in a small backpack and set off on an adventure. If you’re American, that might not seem so strange to you. But as a Pakistani living in Sharjah, UAE, this was very strange indeed. For one, we didn’t grow up on peanut butter; it wasn’t even easily available. Some households stocked Nutella (lucky); ours was a strict “three adult meals a day” household; as a result, my love for curried meats and soft, mushy dals developed very early on. In this instance, though, I dragged my Mum from grocery store to grocery store until we found a jar of peanut butter, proudly assembled a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, put it in a Ziploc (which Mum undoubtedly re-used at least five times after), and set off somewhere. Who knows where? It didn’t taste too great; even twenty or so years later, I don’t really have a taste for peanut butter and would prefer a warm bed of rice with something salty & tangy poured on top. Yes, for lunch. Hello, food coma. 

So why did I do it? Because that’s what Kristy Thomas makes for herself in the 1996 movie version of The Baby-Sitters Club. These spunky, enterprising babysitters were very important to me. I always wanted to be a Stacey but was much more of a Kristy with a dash of Dawn. Every Kristy-with-a-dash-of-Dawn wants to be a Stacey. If you know, you know.

The series was created by Ann M Martin in 1986; ghostwritten books were published until almost fifteen years later. The slim, colorful paperbacks made their way to the Middle East in the 90s (pre-social media, everything arrived a little late, and our pop culture references were always outdated by at least half a cycle) – which may explain why the Pakistani / Indian / Middle Eastern millennial readers are younger than the American readers. For a children’s series written in the 1980s, it was surprisingly inclusive and thoughtful: the series is especially recognized for its Asian-American representation. The Claudia Kishi Club is a Netflix documentary dedicated to just how iconic Claudia Kishi is (let’s be real, I wanted to be her, too). She was Asian-American, but she was terrible at math. Terrible at school, really, but an incredible artist. Gorgeous and popular, with an almost-admirable devotion to the junk food she hides around her room from her super-strict parents.

On the other end of the spectrum was Dawn Schafer, a California girl and environmental activist before everyone became an environmental activist. Her constant preaching is viewed as almost tiresome in the series (do we collectively owe Dawn Schafer an apology? After all, she was right about almost everything except for the ozone layer). During their bi-weekly 5:30 pm meetings, she snacks on sunflower seeds, carob brownies, and enormous bowls of crunchy summer salads (that part of me didn’t relate to Dawn at all). The New Yorker discusses the trendy chocolate substitute from the natural food movement of the 70s in ‘How Carob Traumatized an Entire Generation’ and how it essentially fell off our wellness radar. Will the same thing happen to oat milk? Chia pudding? Tree-bark-like cacao nibs? It’s not impossible. In Dawn’s Big Move, she uses arrowroot as a cornstarch substitute when cooking Chinese food for her family (remember… she’s 13). 

Let’s suspend our disbelief for just a hot minute – after all, these 13- and 11-year-olds were taking care of children just 1-2 years younger than them. They created a fully functional, profitable business with nothing to their name but the Kishi landline and a hidden bag of Twizzlers. 

Instead, let’s join them as they nosh their way to an business venture that would impress even the savviest start-up founders of our slightly-less-exciting, much less snack-y digital age.