Maybe 1 better tell you a little about the club and how it works. We hold meetings three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from five-thirty until six. Our clients call us during those times to say that they need sitters, and then we schedule the jobs for ourselves, depending on who's free.

How do parents know when to call us? Well, I'll go back to the beginning and tell you how the club started. Then you can find out for yourself.

Kristy is the one who thought up the Babysitters Club. (That's the main reason she's the president.) See, way back at the start of seventh grade, Kristy and her family were still living next door to me and across the street from Claud. Kristy's little brother, David Michael, was six then, and Kristy and her two older brothers, Sam and Charlie (they're in high school), were responsible for baby-sitting for him most of the time, since Mrs. Thomas (well, now she's Mrs. Brewer) has a full-time job. But the day came when Kristy's mom needed a sitter for one particular afternoon, and nobody - not Kristy, not Sam, not Charlie - was free. So she got on the phone and began making call after call, in search of a sitter. That was when Kristy got her great idea. What a waste of time, she thought, for her mom to have to make so many calls. Wouldn't it be easy if she could make one call and reach several sitters? Surely one of them would be free.

That was it! Kristy would get together with several of her friends, we would meet a few times a week, and when someone called, one of us was bound to be free for a job. So the caller was practically guaranteed a sitter. Kristy asked Claudia and me to be in her club. When we decided we needed one more member, Claud introduced us to Stacey McGill, a new friend of hers. Stacey and her parents had just moved to Stoneybrook from New York City. We liked Stacey right away and asked her to join. Then we did some advertising so people would know about our sitting service and how to reach us. And soon we were in business. Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and I became the first president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary of the Baby-sitters Club.