Influences: Nancy Drew

I suppose if you made me dig I'd have to admit I had influences but I resist it. I think of myself as self-propelled, my parents standing back and letting me go. I was frighteningly independent. I acted that way, even if I didn't always feel that way.

Case study: I was about 8, my brother 5, at our school picnic at the Chain of Rocks amusement park. My parents were going to take us on the Dodge 'Em cars when suddenly my brother had a friend with him. My parents just assumed I could handle the bumper car by myself and split up between the 2 little boys. Suddenly I was alone, without a clue how to make the bumper car go. I just sat in the middle while everyone crashed into me. I don't think I was crying or anything, but the operator finally ran out among the cars, jumped in and drove me to the side. It was grotesquely traumatic but I didn't complain because I assumed I should have known how to drive a bumper car and it was my fault that I didn't. I don't remember any aftermath at the time but when I talked to my parents years later about it they told me that, yes, they just assumed I could handle it.

I have always assumed that no one would help me except myself. Therefore the only influence I'm going to admit to is Nancy Drew.

My mother gave me my first Nancy Drew book in the fall of 1956 to provide me with some entertainment while she gave me a Toni home permanent. I was in the second grade. My mother later admitted that she didn't read Nancy Drew books till she was in high school, but somehow she knew I was ready at age 8 (probably after the damn bumper car incident!)

Anyway, I was instantly hooked. Nancy didn't need a mother. She had a couple of gal pals (George and Bess) who tagged along and admired her tremendously and a boyfriend Ned who stood by in awe. And, at sixteen, she drove her own roadster. More importantly, she was terribly curious and set out to solve mysteries. This got her into trouble but she always used her brains to get out of it. I can't recall that she ever needed to be rescued (unlike the 8-year-old in the Dodge 'Em car).

My parents weren't rich enough to buy me the whole series — I got one or two every Christmas till maybe sixth or seventh grade — so I read the same ones over and over again and found a few more in the library. In fifth grade, I started my own mystery novel, featuring Jeanne Kirk, also a motherless child, although she had two big brothers. (The sad outcome of that effort is recorded in the short radio production "Write of Passage.")

With my playmates, I always wanted to "play Nancy Drew," which meant we had to make up mysteries about the empty churches and vacant lots around the neighborhood. I had much more energy about this than my friends could sustain. I remembering badgering some cousins of mine one weekend out at my grandmother's clubhouse. "Let's play Nancy Drew! Come on... I'll be Nancy." The adjacent woods were full of mysteries. They'd sustain the role-playing for about fifteen minutes at a stretch, then get distracted. (Much later, in my adulthood, one of my cousins was blabbing at a family gathering about how inventive we were playing Nancy Drew when the kids nowadays just watched television. I had to laugh because all I remembered was the arm-twisting I'd done to get her to play.)

Nancy came back during my second year of college. The harsh Chicago winter of '69 was inducing cabin fever in my dorm. I don't know how it started but suddenly I was Nancy and two of my buddies were George and Bess. (Photo: Izzy, Susan and Noreen as Bess, Nancy and George.) The books were so familiar that everybody on the floor spontaneously adopted roles and if they didn't they were assigned villain names. Everyone seemed to have the language down just right. An older girl took on the role of author Carolyn Keene and arbitrated when the storyline required it. We didn't have mysteries so much as pranks, but we stayed in our roles as well as any modern-day Dungeon & Dragon geek. The camaraderie was delicious.

I loved being Nancy, the motherless child with the indulgent father and the devoted friends — the perfect role model for a future leader with no use for authority figures. And my career? No, not a detective, but a quality assurance specialist who loved sifting through data and tracking down children's center employees doing substandard service for kids… certainly worthy of Nancy.

2.11.2000

See also: Nancy Drew's Father (11.10.04) and short radio production "Midlife Web Diary" (2006).