Today was our BLT show. If you're new to Mid-Morning, you might not know that BLT {which stands for Bekah...Lynne...Thursdays} is our weekly show when we talk about this, that, and the other {most often the other takes over entirely}...and today we talked about stories.
Not our stories this time...but stories we read growing up. What a fun show to hear from all of you about the books you devoured as kids...and how the stories you read helped you identify...helped you learn...helped you enjoy.
I guess in some ways, this is about our stories too. After all, when you were reading books growing up....didn't you ache to be someone in the pages? Didn't you wish you had her hair or this one's talent?
Maybe it's not all bad. Maybe it pushes you to believe you can be even a measure like the person in the pages. That you can pursue your dreams like they pursue theirs. That the kind of love they have could be yours one day.
I grew up on the Baby-Sitters Club books. I wanted to be in the club. I wanted to belong like they did. I wanted an official kit that declared me a good babysitter {which is what I did for a career until college}. And in fact, I tried to be just like them when I went on my jobs. I tried to have the kind of fun with the kids I watched that all the girls in the book had with their kids! In fact, the book Jessi's Secret Language even inspired me to want to learn sign language, and I ended up taking lessons for over a year.
And then there were the Sweet Valley Twins...the perfect valley girls with their silky blonde hair and perfect eyes and dimple in their un-zit-clogged cheeks...and I was just sure I was Elizabeth. We were both good students and loved to write, and I longed to have a twin. I wanted her name to be Megan. {Somehow I don't think I grasped that it wasn't possible to create a twin many years into life...}
And the Mandie Mysteries that made me wish I had a secret Cherokee friend who would hide away with me and teach me all sorts of life wisdom. I read these in elementary school, and when I played school, I always made up quizzes for my students out of the Mandie mysteries.
Lynne and I both read the Boxcar Children. This one always made me wonder if I would have had the mad survival skills if I had to run away from home...and it caused me to turn my playhouse outside into an "boxcar," complete with mismatched toy dishes that I imagined came from a dump.
This one was one of Lynne's picks for a growing up series of books too...I've never heard of it but I won't lie...I'm intrigued. According to Wikipedia, the books were created to urge young women to pursue nursing careers so they could help with the war efforts.
And the books that seemed to dominate the end of our conversation...all the books by Janette Oke. Oh how I love this woman. It is because of her that I have the love for books, stories, and writing that I have today. I've written her notes to thank her for her investment in my life...an investment she didn't even know she had. I wanted to be so many of the young women she wrote about...and I learned much about the grit and tenacity that makes a strong woman...from these lives she penned.
So these are the books that helped shape who we were. These were the pages that gave us people and scenarios to imagine...these are the places we learned life lessons and were pushed forward. Perhaps they are, after all, part of our story.
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