July 24, 1998

I went to the library today... I got out a couple of Alice Hoffman books, a couple of "classic" type thingys I never got around to before, and a copy of "Anne of Green Gables" to reread. That was one of my favorites growing up, but I let my friend Heidi borrow my copy like 5 years ago... I'm starting to think I may not get it back! :-) ...Actually, though, I was more of a Laura Ingalls Wilder girl. The whole thought of traveling in a covered wagon just fascinated me. I used to make covered wagons out of legos all the time..... I really didn't do the "normal" little girl stuff when I was little. My favorite toys were legos, and I would sit there for hours, just me, building these intricate houses. They didn't have walls though... I would just take a base, and I would put one block to mark where the wall would be, and then I'd concentrate on what went in the rooms. Who lived there, what they did, what they looked like.... Everyone of those houses had very complicated stories and I still remember some of them. It was several years later that I first heard about the idea of "play therapy" and I realized instantly that that's exactly what I'd been doing. When I first got legos, I built hospital after hospital, usually just the children's ward, with all these kids in wheelchairs (I'm still an expert at lego wheelchairs!) or lying in beds covered by kleenex. And then all of a sudden, I didn't anymore. And instead, I started to build orphanages. That lasted longer, I built those for years and years, on a fairly regular basis... usually they were for girls and they had a really mean lady to watch them... just like in all the books I read (and in Annie. Annie was a big part of it, I think.) ...and eventually I also started making these one-room schoolhouses where the teacher kept a whip in her desk... that scared me to death the first time I read about a teacher whipping a student! I'm not sure which book it was... probably one of Laura Ingalls Wilder ones... probably the "Farmer Boy" one was the first time I read about that... but it happens in half those kids books.

But I didn't just make scary things... I also made thousands of little one room houses that like 15 people lived in at a time. I liked fitting them all in there... I think the intimacy of it appealed to me. My parents weren't around much when I was a kid, and I got left alone a lot more than they'll admit. (They always say "you weren't home alone that much!" and technically that's true... but what's the difference if there's somebody home if they're too busy to pay any attention to you?) I mean, I'm not really complaining... I think my parents did the best they could. They both grew up in huge families and decided that they wanted to devote all their attention to one kid (at least, that's the way my dad tells it... my mom doesn't talk about anything that happened before I was, and not much even then...) But it didn't really work, because this one kid got really lonely. The "built in playmate" factor is something my parents completely overlooked.

So I spent a whole lot of time alone in my toyroom surrounded by legos. And my mom still calls them the best investment she ever made. And I've never been entirely sure what she meant by that. I mean, whether she's thinking they were a good investment because they kept me out of her hair, or because I liked them, or because they're educational, or...?

I also spent a huge part of my childhood reading... usually, in a tree. :-) I would climb up in a tree with my book and just sit there and read all day. I think I was 12 before I would go in a restaurant without a book... and I can't remember where I read in the winter. I know I did, but in my head, summer and reading are mixed more. I loved the summer reading program our library had. Especially this one summer, I have no idea how old I was... I would go in there and pick out a few books, and there was this form to fill out when you read and if you read so many books you got to pick out a prize, and they had this funny plastic clown figures... they were different colors, but kinda clear, like they were trying to imitate what crystal looks like... I still have those. And the children's room in the library had this magic to it... it still does, really. I went in there today to get "anne of green gables" and there were two kids working on this summer's reading program (it has something to do with feet. I don't know what) and just going in the little back room where they keep the junior reader type books was like going back in time for me. Back then, I read anything and everything, but my favorite books were books that had different worlds in them... Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Neverending Story, Peter Pan, All the "Little house" books, everything by Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables, etc.), they all had these worlds in them that were so different than the one I was living in... later on, I changed my approach to reading books that were exactly like the one I was living in, and I think that's where I got into trouble... you know, when I finally faced reality. I think I was 12 or so.

Today when I was at the library I looked at one of those "book of books" things... this one was a book of the best books for children.. and I was looking just out of curiousity to see how many I had read, and in the "middle reader" and "young adult" sections, I had read at least every other book... and I don't know how I did that. I mean, when it's not like I set out to read all the children's classics. It just happened. And it's also not like that's all I read- I also read every single baby-sitter's club book that came out. And what's really weird is that just about every adult "classic" I've read... well, I don't like them. I've tried so many, and even finished some of them, but it's not the same. I'm starting to think maybe I'm at this in between phase... because I think part of the problem is that I simply don't relate to those books. I mean, I loved "Jane Eyre" ...until she started falling in love with that guy. The parts when she was kid were great. I would still much rather read about kids than adults. Books that are solely about adult relationships tend to lose me. It's not easy for me to admit, but I think I'm just not to that level yet. The best books about adults are the ones that have frequent flashbacks to their childhood.

It's kind of frustrating to me, because most of the books written about kids or even teenagers are written at a lower reading level than adult books... and I tend to feel like I'm being talked down to. And a whole lot of the books about teenagers are really poorly written. For example, recently, I read this horrible book called "Ellen's Case" that I got at the library booksale.... all the reviews on the book said it was "riveting" and "why aren't there more courtroom dramas for teenagers?" but it was just plain awful! It had every cliche in the book- geeky guy loves girl, girl falls in love with older (married) lawyer, older married lawyer breaks girl's heart, girl gives geeky guy a chance. And besides that, it was obvious from the first chapter who was going to win the court case! That kind of book never ends things badly. Ever. And the worst part was the metaphors in that book. I can't remember any of them off the top of my head, but they were terrible. I mean, metaphors are not supposed to make the reader stop reading in disgust because it was so stupid!

Okay. I've officially completed that thought. (This whole entry was one thought. It just kinda kept on going....)

Bye!