From Ron Lin's, "Intellectual Pornograhy," Fall '00 From Ron Lin's, "Intellectual Pornograhy," Fall '00Mr. Rogers used to ask me who were the people in my neighborhood. When I was young, I watched Sesame Street and Romper Room. I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and harbored an unmitigated abhorrence for milk and things with nutritional value. I did my homework and then I'd go outside and play with my friends -- tag, wiffleball, basketball. Hell, I even built a friggin' tree-house! Yessiree, Bob. I watched all the right shows, ate all the right foods, played all the right games. Did I mention I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? As young lads and lasses, we are impressionable. Society goes to great lengths to shelter us from learning too much about the world too quickly. The FCC makes sure the radio waves are clear of obscenities. Cursing is taboo and we're not supposed to see movies with explosions or bare breasts. Children are our greatest assets, so everyone tries to protect their malleable minds like Fort Knox. We're spoon-fed sex like a very hot bowl of soup. So I followed all the rules. Where did I go wrong? The answer is Judy Blume. In the second grade, I was introduced to perhaps the finest work of American literature, Judy Blume's timeless masterpiece, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Existential undertones reverberated powerfully within my sponge-like conscience. It was the touching story of a 12-year-old and his annoying younger brother. Did I mention I'm a middle child? Discovering Judy Blume was like discovering heroin at the ripe age of seven. Fueled by the euphoria derived from Tales, I graduated to her other equally gratifying works: Superfudge, Then Again Maybe I Won't, Blubber and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, just to name a few. I consumed Judy Blume's vast and diverse repertoire of young adult classics like chocolate pudding and routinely checked up on the inside flap on my own personal copy of Superfudge, which provided me with a complete list of Judy Blume's works. Slowly but surely, I advanced through the list until there were only a few works left before I could proclaim myself a self-anointed Master of Judy's Universe. There are a few standards out there to which most young children of our generation can relate. We all know that Judy Blume wrote about issues that a nine-year-old could relate to: cooties, dying pets, annoying siblings, growing up, homework. And so as I slowly ran down the list of "Other Works by Judy Blume," I came across a nondescript book with a nondescript title: Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. And like another hit of smack, I craved for Judy's prescient insight into the young pre-teen world around me. Without warning, the woman that brought me the universal preadolescent experience suddenly pulled the carpet out from under me. Maybe books need to be more clearly labeled: "WARNING: GRAPHIC MENSTRUATION SCENES." I'll freely admit it, however -- I read the whole book. I read the whole book without really "getting it." Maybe it was good for me; Judy Blume gave me the girl's perspective. The problem was that I was nine years old and bleeding from between my legs made about as much sense as discrete mathematics. I figured that maybe I had just read that one fluke, the one book Judy Blume wrote as a joke. Maybe I was taking the book too literally -- maybe we're all metaphorically "bleeding from between our legs." My logic was impeccable. So I confidently began my final foray into the complete works of Judy Blume. It was appropriately titled Forever, and it was about a young girl's first experiences with love and sex. The woman that gave me Superfudge also gave me the most graphic depiction of the human orgasm that I have ever read. It's like taking your kids to a puppet show, only to find the puppets having blindingly torrid sex. Judy Blume turned on me. I just wanted someone to tell me how it was, and instead I got someone telling me about how it was. I was innocent, and suddenly that hot bowl of soup was being poured down my throat. But while I was traumatized at the time, I realize today that I learned more about life from Judy Blume than from anyone else. Barely a day passes without a parent out there worrying about the images and content being delivered to their children. We censor it, we downplay it and we downright avoid it. And when the time is right, we sit kids in classrooms with a video about 13-year-old Jimmy and his absurd quest for sexual self-discovery at the zoo. Clearly, Jimmy had many questions, not to mention a slight problem with erections. But if Jimmy was supposed to be normal, getting advice from an old zookeeper who'd "seen a lot of penises" in his day, I'd rather be decidedly abnormal. And I have Judy Blume to thank for that.
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