My parents knew that my teacher had read Tales to us at school so surely any other book that Judy Blume would be in that same vein. Fortunately, there was no internet for my parents to look up what other books Judy Blume had written. I thank God that they never checked up on what I was reading.
Judy Blume books were my education on many topics that I wasn't learning about at school or at home. They were full of life lessons that were in many cases more important than what I was actually learning. In the 1980s , where was I going to learn about topics like racism, sex, and bullying in an intelligent way that never talked down to a kid? Judy Blume books were one of the only options.
"Are You There God? It's me Margaret" was a book that changed many young women's lives because of its honest depiction of a girl going through puberty (and frankly it was also eye opening for me to know what was going on with all of the girls around me). Then Again Maybe I Won't was the boy version of that book. It doesn't get as much credit as Margaret gets, but for me it was a life changer.
Tony, the main character, is a boy in the middle of a lot of changes. His family has just moved from there working class neighborhood to a more white collar neighborhood in New York, and in the middle of all this life change he dives into the pangs of adolescent change as well.
I related to Tony. Not so much because I had just experienced a big move in class because I hadn't. Not so much because I was girl crazy like he was because let's face it, I wasn't. But I related to him because all the people around him thought everything was going just great because he was one of those kids like me who people just made those assumptions about but didn't actually ask.
One of the most "shocking" moments of the book is when Tony has a sexual dream and wakes up to the mess on the bed that every teenage boy wakes up to at some poin. Thank you Judy Blume for teaching me what a wet dream was! It made the first time I ever had one on a family vacation at my eighty five year old aunt's house slightly less mortifying.
Another way I related to Tony was that he was a big worrier like me. At a certain point his worrying over something his "friend" has done gets to him so much that he develops an ulcer. We didn't have the words for those things then like we do now, but Tony struggled with anxiety. As someone who has been diagnosed with and continues to live with an anxiety disorder, seeing a character in a book go through sometung similar was very important. It made me feel like I was less alone and that I wasn't totally crazy.
Last summer I was able to listen to Judy Blume speak and was able to ask her a question from the audience. Afterward she stayed to sign her new book, and I was able to thank her for Then Again Maybe I Won't and thank her for the impact her words made on my life.
Below is a picture of the moment that I got to tell Judy Blume what a difference she had made in my life. It isn't a particularly flattering picture of me, but it is a moment I will not forget.
Next time: A film that changed my life
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