#71: Claudia and the Perfect Boy
Seeing her friends coupled up (Mary Anne and Logan, Stacey and Robert, even Kristy and Bart) makes Claudia want a steady boyfriend of her own. But not just any boyfriend! She decides to list the qualities of her perfect boy.
“If you weren’t sure what you wanted, you might not recognize it when you found it.” - Claudia, page 3
Here is Claudia’s list (with my spelling help):
Handsome
Muscles (not too many, not too few)
Taller than me
Funny (extremely)
Athletic
Sensitive
Easy to talk to (a good listener)
Interesting (lots to say)
Artistic
Good dresser
Good speller (willing to correct mine)
Not critical
Crazy about me
I want the best for Claudia (even though she calls Mrs. Barrett old because she must be at least thirty) and I hope she finds her perfect boy, although finding all of those qualities in one middle-schooler might be a little tricky. That’s how Stacey feels, too, when she reads Claudia’s list, but she’s totally supportive.
“I think you’re absolutely right to set high standards. So many girls settle on any old guy just so they can have a boyfriend. I don’t understand how they can do that. Your guy will come along.” - Stacey, page 30
Best friend icons! When they find personal ads in a magazine, they realize they could put a personals column in the SMS Express and help Claudia meet her perfect boy! Emily Bernstein, the editor, agrees and Claudia’s Personals is born. Letters start flooding in, but most kids write way too much, so Claudia has to choose only the most important information for the ads. And then a magical thing happens… Stacey teaches Claudia how to use spellcheck on a computer. CLAUDIA’S LIFE IS CHANGED FOREVER. Honestly, imagine being as smart as Claudia actually is but always being judged on your bad spelling, and then finding something that can help you express your ideas without worrying about your spelling. INCREDIBLE!
Claudia gets a couple of personals from eighth-grade boys that she thinks are appealing (Great Guy and Good Listener), and she writes to them. She also gets a letter from a seventh-grader named Sean who is having a hard time with his parents’ divorce and wants other kids to talk to. Claudia tracks him down and offers to run his ad either way, but also gives him the phone number of a therapist who helped Mary Anne and suggests he may want to talk to her. Claudia is kind and encouraging. YES! NORMALIZE THERAPY!
The Barrett family is definitely going to need therapy because they’ve just discovered that Marnie is allergic to their family dog, Pow, and they have to get rid of him. Mrs. Barrett is desperately searching for the right home for Pow, but Buddy and Suzi are taking it really hard and calling Marnie a “dog killer.” This is one sad-ass subplot, my friends. All’s well that ends well, though - the Pike family offers to take Pow, meaning that he’ll go to a good home and the Barrett kids will be able to see him all the time.
Claudia’s Personals is a smash success at SMS; everyone is obsessed with the new column and Claudia becomes a minor celebrity (which she should have been already, IMHO). There’s a little blip when she realizes that the Great Guy she wrote to was actually Alan Gray (ew) but she shuts him down; instead, she accepts a date with Brian Hall, aka Good Listener. The date is a dud (Brian doesn’t ask her anything about herself, and he’s not as artistic or funny as he made himself sound in his ad) but while at the Rosebud Café Claudia sees a real live love connection between “Big-Boned Beauty” Liza and a guy named Nathan. So at least her column is working for someone. It causes a tiff between Mary Anne and Logan (due to a cut-and-paste error, and Claud helps solve the problem) but it’s working for a lot of other people. And Claudia is noticing that certain people writing in seem like perfect matches… maybe she should be a matchmaker too. Meanwhile, she’s kind of getting into working on the paper. Not only is her column so popular that they have given her more space each issue, but she’s really good at working on the layout, too, because of the way her mind works visually and artistically. Aside from finding a perfect boy, she’s found something she’s really good at. MY HEART IS WARMED.
Since she seems to have a talent for matchmaking, her column expands to include Claudia Advises, in which she pairs up ads of people who seem to have a lot in common - and it’s pretty successful! She ends up on another date herself, this time with Alan Gray’s neighbor, Rock, who goes to an all-boys private school. He seems promising at first but once they meet he’s obsessed with the fact that Claudia is Japanese; in fact, he is obsessed with “eastern culture” and seems shocked that her family doesn’t eat sushi and teriyaki every night. She shuts him down by being like, “What are you, eastern European? Do you speak German or Polish? Do you eat friggin’ goulash and kielbasa every night?” TELL HIM, CLAUD.
Claud and Rock see a movie that sounds suspiciously like 1993’s Sommersby, and Rock has a tattoo?? (How old is this kid?) Claudia is not into Rock’s whole vibe. Another one bites the dust. And another one after that - Claudia goes out with a boring dude named Kurt. She seems great at matching up everyone except herself! (Because tbh, no one is worthy of her and we all know it.) She even gets a thank you letter from Sean, the boy she’d given the therapist’s phone number; he says it helped him a lot, and it makes Claudia feel really good. And she’s okay with not finding Mr. Perfect right now. After all, she found out a bunch of other things she’s good at.
“I had my friends. And I had myself. Everything I needed to be happy had been right here all along.” - Claudia, page 149
I don’t remember if this was one of my OG favorite BSC books, but it’s definitely one of my favorites now. It would also make a really excellent arc on Netflix’s “Baby-sitters Club” series; I really hope they use it!
