I recently watched the movie version of the Judy Blume book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. When the book came out, I was about the age of the main character, Margaret. I had just moved from the city to Gladwyne. I remember quite vividly it was like moving to a foreign country.

I remember everybody in seventh grade talking about the book. My mother wouldn’t let me read it, so of course I snuck / bought a copy. what I remember about the book most of the time is it kind of spoke to me because of the age. And also my being a new kid in a new community.

Moving to the Main Line wasn’t the easiest. Like Margaret, I had lived in the city so suburbia was truly alien to me at first. It was not that it was bad, it was beautiful but so different. You could open windows at night for one, and there were horses across the street, and down the road.

Making friends at almost 12 wasn’t as easy when you were a new kid trying to fit in with girls who were your grade but a year older and who have known each other since kindergarten.

Something that initially made it a little easier was that we lived close to a friend of my father’s from high school and he had a daughter my age. Because of her I did start to make friends but just like Judy Blume’s Margaret, I still struggled with my place in my new world. (And oh the parallels of my moving to Chester County in my late 40s and becoming a stepparent!)

Parts of the movie that were in the book so resonated once again included secret clubs of girls. I remember slumber parties where they tried to call up the spirit of Jim Croce on a ouija board.

And the whole bra thing. My sister who is 3 years younger than I is the one who decided we needed bras. I still remember my mother’s face when my then almost 9 year old sister announced we needed bras. Of course, neither of us actually did but much like the book/movie everyone around us had them.

And deodorant/antiperspirant. My friends used name brands back then like Secret. My mother came home with Tussy roll on. I hated that.

Sneaking to shave my legs the first time….and slicing the crap out of them. That was followed by a lecture from my father with how his mother never shave her legs. Of course that made me think of all those old Italian ladies his mother and my great aunts knew who tucked mint leaves under their arms in the summer and my 12 year old self wanted to die on the spot.

Ear piercing. I lost that battle. I actually got my ears pierced in the health center my freshman year of college. When I was 17.

When school started in 7th grade, I went from a room of not quite a dozen kids, to a huge public school junior high with a completely overwhelming amount of students. I went from a small school in the city to a huge school that was like a city in itself.

Settling in, the mean girls were the worst. Some I still see as pretty much the way they were then even if they are now 60. No, they aren’t still wearing their Candies with tight French jeans and crimping their hair, or at least I hope not. And I still remember exactly how miserable they were to me and others back then. Sometimes I have thought I should thank them because they helped make me able to stand up for myself.

I have seen some of the former mean girls over the years as they have passed. One thing that has always stuck with me is I thought they were ridiculous then, and to an extent, now. Some are actually almost mummified caricatures of their former 12 and 13 year old selves. File under karma baby, karma.

However do you know where the worst mean girls existed? St. John Vianney Sunday School in Gladwyne. There was a girl who was a year behind me that live the next street over who used to harass the crap out of me in Sunday school. And what was it over? Clothes my mother bought me that were similar to hers. Things like a jumper. A corduroy jumper.

One of my friends and I have spoken about these “Margaret years”. And while we all moved past those years, but some of the memories linger and pop up unexpectedly. And watching the movie did bring some of the memories back. Same era, age, situation…which is why I liked the book my mother didn’t want me to read back then.

Life for me changed for the better when I was able to get out of the Lower Merion School District Schools. When I went to Shipley, another world and path opened. And I was finally in a place where I felt I better belonged. Part of it was fairly simple in that I never thrived in large schools and that was OK.

I’m glad that book existed for us back then. It spoke to so many of us. Parents didn’t want us reading it because it was controversial to them and contemporary to us. That book was hard for our mothers who were literally born in a different world than the one they were raising us in.

So isn’t ironic today when we hear about people today trying to keep books contemporary to kids today from them? Only these people today scream and scream and scream. I’m glad our parents didn’t act like that. It was simpler: they said no, we snuck the Judy Blume books into our houses, and everyone survived. I don’t recall them being dissected and screamed about in PTA or school board meetings.

Maybe more should watch the movie adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. It still offers perspective. The years pass, the situations change, yet there is always commonality.

You see, much like with politics, with life in general past is prologue isn’t it? And that goes hand in hand with we can’t bury our history by pretending things didn’t happen because our history will repeat itself.

Thanks for stopping by.