Tallahassee Higgins

This poor child is a ginger, her name is Tallahassee, her mom is a complete nutbar, and she’s being uprooted from crappy Florida to crappy suburban Maryland in the middle of winter.

Her ditzy mom has decided that, since she is 29, she’s losing her looks and has to get to Hollywood NOW NOW NOW to make it big. She’s dating some lecherous fucktard who enables this belief. Tallahassee’s not buying it. They don’t care, and ship her off to her aunt and uncle in the PGC.

When she gets to Maryland, she immediately loves her uncle and thinks her aunt is a nightmare bitch. Because the aunt’s name is Thelma, I for some reason have always pictured her as Aunt Selma from the Simpsons, and it cracks me up every time. Anyway she sleeps in her mom’s childhood room and discovers her mom was the dumb girl who drew horses as a kid.

Tallahassee meets a girl named Jane who lives behind her, and they become bff. Jane tells her that Tallahassee’s mom and her mom were good friends back in the day, but drifted apart for some reason when they were in high school. Tallahassee lies to all of the girls in her class about her mom being in a movie with Richard Gere (As the Gerbil Climbs?) because she figures she’ll only be in Maryland for a couple of weeks before Liz sends for her.

She clashes with Thelma over everything from clothes to bedtime to the goddamn dog, and decides she’s going to run away to California. Oh, but she’s learning so much in Maryland, such as it’s quite possible that Jane’s mom and her mom drifted apart due to Tallahassee’s mom stealing a certain ginger boyfriend from her. The more Tallahassee learns about Johnny, the boyfriend in question, the more she wants to know. Unfortunately, he was killed in Vietnam and his mother seems to have never gotten over it, according to Thelma.

That doesn’t faze Tallahassee. She goes over to Johnny’s mom’s house to play with the dogs and show off her l33t gymnastics skills (apparently Johnny was a gymnast.) More fighting with Thelma and Tallahassee, and Jane’s mom is a total cunt to her. By now, the girls at school have figured out that she is full of shit, and her mom has disappeared from her job in California. Things are looking pretty shitty, so Tallahassee makes one final plea to Johnny’s mom – who doesn’t want her either.

She runs away. On a bus.

Of course, she’s caught quickly, and Thelma comes to get her. Blow-out fight, woooooooooo! It ends with Thelma busting her ass in a parking lot, and Tallahassee helping her up. They go to Mickey D’s and work shit out. Thelma even admits Johnny is probably her father, though she doubts Tallahassee’s mom knows.

Her mom shows up on the doorstep of Thelma’s house, just to say hi before leaving for New York. It finally dawns on Tallahassee that her mom sucks, and she tells her so. At least she gets a straight answer that yes, Johnny’s her father, and yes, she stole him from Jane’s mom. The self-centered bitch at least sheds a tear when her daughter lets her know that Johnny’s dead. Now that she has roots, friends, and family in Maryland, she doesn’t feel so terrible. Nobody really gives a rat’s ass what happens to her mom, either, and Thelma just kind of rolls her eyes when Tallahassee tells her what happened.

Daphne’s Book

Picture it. Suburban Maryland, 1980-something. A doofy seventh-grader on the fringes of popularity has the worst day of her life and gets stuck with a total dingus as a partner for a huge English project. She comes to realize that her partner is actually pretty cool, but is grossly neglected and facing abuse at home. After promising not to tell, she tells her mom, and the partner/her sister are thrown into an orphanage. Happy ending?

Sophia Petrillo couldn’t make this shit up.

Jessica, a sort-of nerd who’s bffs with a popular girl, gets stuck with Daphne for a creative writing project. Jess = the best writer in the class; Daphne = best artist in the class. Apparently Daphne is Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club minus the dandruff. They work on their story by playing with mice and Daphne’s sister, Hope, but Jessica is concerned that they are being abused and/or neglected at home by Psycho Grandma.

Yes, Psycho Grandma truly believes that Dead Father is coming home from Vietnam. It’s pretty freaking sad.

Anyway, Daphne flips her nonsense on Jessica because she has no spine and just sits there when her “friends” rip on Daphne. After a while, D decides to drop out of school at the tender age of 12? 13? because Psycho Grandma says she’s “too smart!” to go, according to Hope. Unfortunately, this information is revealed in a Mickey D’s bathroom where the Plastics are playing with makeup. I can only imagine a soundtrack involving Good Charlotte and Jimmie’s Chicken Shack at this point, with some SR-71 thrown in for good measure.

Daphne is actually dropping out to take care of Hope, because Grandma has lost her ever loving mind. Things get very tense/stressful, and Grandma flips her shit at the local food mart (Giant?) over some pickles and/or peanut butter – Daphne has only collected enough bottles to pay for one. No, I am not making this up; yes, this is heartbreaking.

Daphne makes Jessica promise not to tell anyone about what’s going on, but she talks to her brother and he pretty much tells her if she cares about Daphne at all to do something. So, Jessica tells her mom and shit hits the fan. Grandma goes into the hospital, Daphne and Hope are placed in a maximum security orphanarium, Adlai gives them surgery to make them adequate.. wait, Futurama tangent, sorry. Actually, their orphanage is quite pleasant. Jessica and Daphne win first place in the writing contest. Grandma dies. Hope & Daphne go live with relatives.

This is why I love MDH. Is it really a happy ending, or is it a Gordy happy ending?

derp derp

nobody really even reads this, which is fantastic, but I found a veritable shit ton of books at my mom’s that I am going to pass on over to people who are a lot better than me at this (besides my MDH books, obviously.)