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!” Icould 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.
