My Secret Crush!

You know the old parlor game, “If you could invite "X" number of people, living or deceased, to a dinner party, who would you ask?” My list changes every time I'm reminded of the game, but one name pretty much always stays put: Benjamin Franklin. This guy was the total package: intelligent, humorous, sensual, resourceful, honest, charming, wise, bawdy, worldly, inventive, sensible, observant, diplomatic, and on and on and on. I’m not sure I’d want to invite anyone else to this dinner party if Ben were going to be there…I’d much rather have him all to myself. Okay, enough about my secret crush on a guy who's been dead for over 200 years...

As a printer by trade, the founder of America's first lending library, a voracious reader, and a strong proponent of intellectual dialogue, Benjamin Franklin had a lot to say about freedom of the press. I could attempt to sum up his thoughts on that topic, but I couldn't say it better than he did himself in his “Apology for Printers,” an editorial for his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. It’s a pretty forceful argument for freedom of the press, and also for that of speech and thought.

(My only quibble with Franklin would be on his point #10 in the above, in which he says that he himself would refuse to print anything “that might countenance vice, or promote immorality.” As any reader of Franklin knows, the man understood that sex sells, and he wasn't above going that route from time to time in order to push his newspapers...sometimes stepping well over the morality line of the time.)

Are You there Judy? It's Me, Susan.

Wowzers, but Judy Blume was my savior as a young woman. She helped me through those dark adolescent years -- helping me to understand that I wasn't a complete freak, and that I wasn't alone in my angst. Margaret was a late bloomer (hey! me too!). Deenie had a physical disfigurement that made her feel all creepy and weird (hey! me too!). Karen's parent's were getting a messy divorce (hey! me too!). Katherine grappled with her emerging sexuality (hey! me too!). 

(Doesn't she look just like someone you could really talk with?)

Point is, Judy Blume understood kids. She not only knew what they were thinking and going through, but she knew how to relate to them in a way that parents and friends couldn't always satisfy. Sure, my mom was great, and open about the "sex-talks," and always too willing to share information with me (she bought me Our Bodies, Ourselves, after all!). But when you're a tween (a term that didn't exist back in my day; you were either a teenage or you weren't yet), sometimes the last person you want to talk to is your mother, no matter how great she might be. Likewise for the friends...they might love you, and share many of the same feelings and problems - but it can be really hard to open yourself up to your peers when you're not always sure of acceptance or even able to articulate your own feelings. 

But I never had to worry about Judy judging me. Judy never made me feel weird, she never made me feel alone. Rather, she helped me to understand, in a way that nobody else could, that I was not a freak, and that, yes, I would come through it all okay. And I think that was because she was an author. Not a mother, not a friend, not a kindly aunt...not anybody that I had to actually have an awkward conversation with. Instead, Judy wrote stories about kids like me...kids that might have had some of the same problems...but, I felt, she was writing especially to me. And that's what I found so powerful about her books; her amazing ability to connect on such a personal level.

I Googled Judy, and wasn't surprised at all by the results; that her books have been frequently challenged and banned. Please visit her website. She's got a great section on censorship there. I especially relate when she says, "I wish the censors could read the letters kids write," and goes on to quote a correspondent, "Dear Judy, I don't know where I stand in the world. I don't know who I am. That's why I read, to find myself. Elizabeth, age 13." 

Yes, Elizabeth, I totally get that. And, Elizabeth, I'm sorry so many others don't.