Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Book Adventures: Book Banning, The Velveteen Rabbit, and That Time Mary Poppins Almost Killed My A**



My book club is currently reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.  Why?  It’s been banned in one of our local school districts.  Because, my people, there is nothing that makes a book more attractive than its status as a banned book.  Ban a book, and I immediately want…
that…
book!

It’s kind of like saying to me, “Ophelia, darling?  I have placed this box of chocolates on your counter.  It’s really a rather offensive box of chocolates with all its awful sugar and numerous calories.  You may eat any single thing in your entire house.  Except…for these chocolates.”

My people?  I’m eating the damn chocolates. 

Not only will I eat them, I will RELISH them.  I won’t even feel guilty.  I will literally laugh at your attempt to keep me from eating the chocolates….while I eat them.  I will call my friends to tell them of the wonderful chocolates you tried to keep me from.  They’ll laugh.  Then they’ll go buy the same box. 
But, hey…that’s me.  I’m sure high school students will be much more respectful of your well meaning attempt to keep them from…wait, what was one of the reasons cited for the ban? 
 
Ahh…yes…references to masturbation.

You’re quite right, of course, ladies and gents.  If my experience having been raised with two brothers and then further raising two sons of my own has taught me one thing, it is that teenage boys don’t know a single thing about masturbation.  No, they do not.  Those 35 minute showers they take?  Simply a desire to practice those good hygiene habits you’ve instilled.  Because, if that odor wafting from their gym bag says anything, it says:  I enjoy being impeccably clean.  
   
Books are dangerous.

I mean, read the wrong book and who knows WHAT your child may do.  My own mother was very liberal in her allowance of reading material when I was growing up and I can honestly say, that books got me in a little bit of trouble now and again.

For example, after reading The Velveteen Rabbit, I became obsessed with never (ever, EVER) throwing any of my playthings away.  Because, I loved them all so well, and so truly and purely, that I KNEW they would all become real one day and I wanted to be there when my sweet, Tenderheart Carebear began pawing about.  Now, one would think, that this was a situation that resolved itself once I hit my teen years.  But, alas, no.  My parent’s attic was littered with the remnants of my girlhood.  The day my father was able to bring the truckload of Cabbage Patch Dolls, My Little Ponies, and all manners of stuffed animals and hand them off to my unsuspecting husband (I wasn’t home at the time) was a gleeful day for my parents.  For my husband?  Not so much.  

“Why on EARTH did you save all of this?” he’d exclaimed.

“The Velveteen Rabbit?”

“Oh.  Ok…We can get rid of it now, though, right?”

“Wellll…”

And, then there was the little (teeny, really) “umbrella incident of 1984” (I was 9).  It was really over dramatized, if you ask me.  The thing was--I had just read several of the Mary Poppins books.  And, then, (of course) watched Mary Poppins (read, then watch, people…read, THEN, watch).  Annnnd, I had the idea that, perhaps, like Mary Poppins, I could fly (float, really) with the help of an umbrella.  So, waiting for just the right wind coming from the east on what seemed like precisely the right sort of day, I grabbed my lavender umbrella, put the plans I painstakingly detailed in my back pocket along with a pencil (in case last minute revisions were needed), and told my mom I was heading “out back.”
 
“It’s not raining,” she’d said.

“Oh, I know.  But, just in case,” I said quickly and ran for the door.

“Ok…well, I’m going to go have a cup of coffee in peace and quiet while the kids nap.  You behave yourself out there.”  (My Mom ran a daycare center out of our home and was nearly always on a quest for peace and quiet, which she said so often, that for years I thought it was one word, “peasanquiet!”)

“Ok!” I loudly whispered as I shut the door.

Once outside, I immediately went to work.  I had formulated a plan for getting up on the roof (yes…the roof of the house).  I consulted my map (completely unnecessary but made it all feel so much more Treasure Island-ish), and then shoved it back in my pocket, and with my umbrella dangling from my wrist, I immediately set to climbing our apricot tree.  From there, it was just a small hop onto our six foot back yard fence, which had a two-by-four at the top that I could easily balance and walk along (I fancied myself the next Mary Lou Retton).  I had to navigate the fence for about 10 feet (15, tops) when I would come to the point where I was parallel with our chimney.  The chimney and fence were separated by a narrow sidewalk.  So, I had to stand on the fence, facing the chimney and lean/fall forward until my hands slapped brick.  So, at this point, my feet were on the fence, my hands were on the chimney, and my body was stretched over the sidewalk.  

I immediately gasped.  In my planning, I’d forgotten to write down what I now viewed as the most important rule of adventuring:  Never look down.  For a moment, I just hovered, not breathing, suspended in time—staring at the distant sidewalk below. 

“Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious…” I breathed.

And then, louder, “Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious!”

Feeling better, I shook off the panic.  I had a plan.  There would be no problem if I just stuck to the plan.  On the side of the chimney there was a small square landing.  All, I had to do was scoot my hands across the brick and my feet along the fence until I was at the corner of the chimney.  And, then, holding the corner, leap my feet from the fence to the two foot square landing.

Yatzee! 

From there, it was just a matter of grabbing the lower eave of the house with one hand and the corner of the chimney with the other and slowly walk my feet up the corner where the chimney met the side of the house.  Then, placing my forearm on the roof, I pulled the rest of my body up and onto the roof.  I lay panting.  I had scratched my arm on the rough shingles, and barked my shin on the bricks, but I’d made it.  I rolled to my stomach, pulled out my pencil and map and drew and asterisk, beside which I wrote:  

DON’T LOOK DOWN!

I exhaled, sat up, and taking in the view, I gasped.  It was magical!  The roof lines and treetops were a site to behold.  I was seeing my neighborhood from an entirely new perspective.  Looking more to my immediate surroundings, I immediately mentally noted the spot where the chimney met the roof as a new reading spot.  I stood, shook off, and slowly made my way to the front of the house, where I had planned to put my Mary Poppins moment into action.  I chose the front yard due to there being more space for me to float down the street.  If I did it over the back yard, I would merely float over the many back yards in the neighborhood.  I much preferred the idea of floating down the street.  It was more public and therefore more magnificient.  I unsnapped and opened my umbrella.  I made my way to the edge of the roof, where I stood with my tips of my toes off the edge, hovering over the leafy gutter.  I held the umbrella above my head, closed my eyes, and began to chant:  

“If I believe--I can fly.  If I believe--I can fly,” over and over.

I was completely focused and I really ALMOST believed.  But, the fact that my umbrella was lavender with a plain cylindrical handle bothered me a bit.  I felt that, perhaps, part of the magic of Mary Poppins’ umbrella was in having a black one with a curved cane handle.  I pushed the thought from my head and began chanting louder and more fervently, squeezing my eyes shut tighter, teetering a bit on the edge.  The moment my mind made the transition from hope to belief, I would extend my arm high above my head (with the dignified grace of Miss Poppins), tip forward and fly to destinations unknown.  I was feeling belief begin to well within me when suddenly my chanting was interrupted by a high pitched, alarmed sort of screaming,  
“Oh my God!  Oh my good, gracious GOD!  Peggy!”  

 I peeked one eye open.

One of the daycare mother’s had come to collect her child and was on the sidewalk that led to our front door and which was directly below my feet.  My fervent chanting had clearly brought attention to myself.  My mother peeked out our front screen,
“What is it, Laura?”

“Your daughter!” She pointed a shaking finger up at me.  

I calculated.  It would take my mother a few minutes to figure a way up to me.  If I could just focus!  I continued to chant again.
 
“Ophelia!  Ophelia, so help me…you listen to me, right now, young lady!  Get DOWN from there!”

“I’m about to!  Just give me a few seconds!” I shrieked. 

I chanted with renewed zeal.  

“No!  NOOOOO!  Do you hear me?  You will break both of your legs!  Do you hear me, young lady?!”

I continued to chant when she did two things:  she shouted all THREE of my names followed by a piercing, “If you do not get your fanny down from there this very minute, I…I…I simply don’t know what I’ll do!  Do you hear me?  DO YOU HEAR ME, Lady Ann?”

Adventure ruined.  Why?  Because:

          1)  It is impossible to focus when your mother uses your full name.  There is something about using all three of your names that strikes a fear that will both chill you to the bone, and render your mind completely ineffective.  Every kid knows that.
 2)  She didn’t make a specific threat.  Had she said, “you’ll be grounded from television for a month!”  I

could have weighed it and decided if my current adventure was worth such a price (in this case:  hell yes!). 

But, when my mother had lost the ability to conjure up an immediate punishment?  It was bad.  It was

unimaginably horrible.  It meant, she’d think on it.  And, when she thought on a thing—the things that woman

could do…it was truly terrifying.  For the love of Judy Blume, she could take away my books.  Perhaps, for

the entire summer vacation, even!  It was unthinkable.

      3)   She had called me, “Lady Ann.”  I hated when she called me Lady Ann.  I simply couldn’t think of anything worse than my mother calling me Lady Ann.  I couldn’t, to this day, articulate precisely why I abhorred this so entirely.  It had something to do with the suggestion that I was a lady (something I desired quite ardently NEVER to be), coupled with that awful monosyllabic name, Ann.  There was not a single name more boring to me than the name Ann (except, perhaps, Sue).  Annie?  Annie was ok.  Anna was even better.  But, Ann.  Ugh.  It simply didn’t get more pedestrian than Ann (this abhorrence for the name, Anne, would be completely upended and totally reversed in the coming years when I would read The Diary of Anne Frank—but I hadn’t done so as yet—and so continued my irrational hatred of the name).  Lady Ann?!?!  It made me want to scream.

I let out a sigh.  My focus was totally ruined.  I collapsed my umbrella and began backing up. 
 "Ok..ok…don’t have a cow,” I muttered under my breath. 

“What was that?” she fairly shouted.

“Nothing!  I’m going!  I’m doing what you said!”

“I certainly hope you are doing so without any sass!  Do you hear me?  Do you understand the words I am saying to you?”

“Yes…I hear you, “ I practically moaned.

“That girl,” I heard her say to the mother, “I haven’t any idea where she comes up with this stuff.  She will be the death of me.  That child will be my very death…mark my words…”

I rolled my eyes.  Oh geez.  For Heaven’s sake.  What an exaggeration.  It wasn’t THAT big of a deal.  I began hiking up the roof-line toward the chimney when I spotted my older brother sitting on the steepled top of the roof, his hand over his mouth silently laughing.  
“What were you doing?”

“Nothing!  You mind your own bees wax!”  

There was no way he would understand.  The only thing HE ever read were “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.  If you didn’t like one ending, you could just read it again and choose another.  How ridiculous.  What if Old Yeller had been a “choose your own adventure”?  Or The Yearling?  It was a cop out.  It was the tender heartbreak that so utterly fused one’s heart to a character.  It was that heartbreak that had me thinking with longing of Old Yeller with every passing yellow lab.  Or, that would, more than a dozen years in the future, stop my breath and bring tears to my eyes as I watched a yearling fawn dance with wild abandon across a mountain meadow.  Choose your own Adventure.  Psh.  Absurd.
“How did you even get up here?” I asked.

“The ladder.  I put it up by the wood stack where Mom wouldn’t see it.”

I raised my nose in disdain.  

The ladder? 

Where was the poetry in that?  

I headed to the chimney.
“What are you doing?  Why don’t you just take the ladder?”

“You wouldn’t understand!”  I shouted and stomped away in indignation.

So, you see? 
My reading of Mary Poppins practically killed me
. 
Heck, it practically killed my mother.  

To date, I don’t know of a single person who has masturbated to death.  

So, the lesson seems clear:

We should ban Marry Poppins.

No?  

Seems ridiculous does it?

Huh.

Fancy that.

No comments:

Post a Comment