The Baby Sitters Club, The Sandlot and Bitter melon soup story with Teens

The Baby Sitters Club, The Sandlot and Bitter melon soup story with Teens

Since I spent my teenage years in Korea, the stories of the Baby Sitters Club series and The Sandlot feel unfamiliar to me. So, this time, I wanted to take a closer look at the feelings, emotions, and lives of American teenagers and indirectly experience them, so I watched and reviewed these two movies.

What both movies have in common is the youthful story of the vibrant innocence unique to teenagers. Even though the subject matter and direction are different, readers can clearly feel their youth and liveliness in the book or the movie. From the perspective of an older person, this can clearly become a longing and nostalgia for the past youth.

Review of The Baby-Sitters Club Like Golden's recollections, this story is thrillingly relatable, with changing middle school friendships, new dynamics between siblings and parents, unrequited love, mean girls, homework, and exploring new hobbies all thrilling and moving forward. It's true that it feels like a glimpse of what's going to happen. In addition, although The Sandlot is not about the common social, political, and racial conflicts that attract social resonance and movement, it captures the whimsy, wit, naivety, and passion of the 12-year-old protagonist, and this is enough to be imprinted in the minds of all ages. We created iconic teen's facial expressions. This movie is about sports, but it's not a story about results, sports heroes, or sportsmanships. Nevertheless, people fall into the illusion of being back in their teens just by looking at the actual protagonists' lines, actions, and concerns.

These two movies (classics) are so ordinary, yet so special that I get sick of them. This may seem to indicate that movies themselves do not necessarily need great historical and documentary material or amplify events or conflicts to make them sweat. In this respect, I think the Bitter Melon Soup article, the author wrote also has a lot of memorable code. When I read this story, I remembered an episode from my life in Germany.

On the night of my first Christmas in Germany, I heard someone urgently knocking on the door, so I rushed to open it barefoot and in my pajamas. When I opened the door, my family and I saw an amazing sight. It was like a choir, with about 10 children singing in angelic white and beautiful clothes, similar to church choir uniforms. I was so shocked that I paused for a moment because there was no culture like this in Korea. They looked at me with loving eyes and continued to sing. I stood stiffly like a nutcracker until their song ended. And in my head, I wonder if they will see my bare feet. I was nervous that people would laugh at me when they saw me in my pajamas. Afterwards, as soon as the song ended, I smiled awkwardly and immediately closed the door. It was only after a while that I realized that this was a tradition and that in these cases, simple gifts such as cookies or chocolate were given to the angels. I felt so embarrassed for them. And these cultural differences were something that always happened while I was living as a foreigner.

 I'm actually a warm and kind person, so why couldn't I smile at that time? How disappointed did they feel for me? But this was really due to my inexperience and lack of understanding of the culture. In the bitter melon soup story, I loved how the author was surprised by its appearance when he first saw bitter melon in his Vietnamese friend, Tony's yard, and how they later got over this shock and opened their hearts by getting to know each other through food. As a side note, ever since I slammed the door on the angels, I'd gotten along well with the other angels who came to my house at Christmas. After this confusion, I shared Korean bulgogi with my German neighbors, got to know them, and built good relationships.

I think Bitter Melon story also did a good job of depicting the friendship, confusion, and enlightenment of teenage years through the ordinary subject matter of Canh Khổ Qua (Vietnam's bitter melon soup). Perhaps, as in the case of the Baby Sitters Club series or The Sandlot, the material is ordinary, but I can immerse myself in it and empathize with it, which is why many people remember and love it. And I think that by depicting this subject in great detail, the sensibilities, understanding, and attitudes of teenagers, it made me feel like this was a scene from my teenage years.

​It's as if I was reading Bitter Melon Soup and recalling a forgotten Christmas Eve night. I think these movies and classics steer us away from the error that too often limits the scope of storytelling by relying on money-making drama to signify a game, a season, or a championship or dramatical success.