She elevated honesty to an art form.īy the time I had kids, Blume’s oeuvre was neatly packaged in box sets, but I resisted the urge to stockpile them, wanting my daughters and son to stumble upon her novels the way I did, as the need arose.
Where stammering parents and mortified health teachers fumbled, Blume provided simple language for embarrassing and awkward conversations. The novels sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with “Forever” provided a crash course in change, uncertainty, loneliness and countless other scourges of adolescence. We treated our communal, beleaguered volume with the reverence of a treasured text that held the secrets of the universe - which, in a way, it did.īut sex isn’t the only subject that Gen Xers learned about from Judy Blume, who is now 84 years old.
I wasn’t the only one! “ Forever” made the rounds at lunch tables and passages were whispered aloud at sleepovers (sheepishly or lasciviously, depending on the basement and how much time we had before “ Friday Night Videos” came on after midnight). The first page of Chapter 12 was permanently dog-eared and the spine of the book was broken in such a way that the pages fell open to a sex scene, one I knew by heart. There, beneath coat-hanger mobiles spinning lazily from track lighting, you’d run your finger along a cool metal shelf - no need to consult the card catalog, this was familiar territory - until you came upon an oft-revisited, much-handled paperback of “ Forever,” by Judy Blume. Once you had amassed enough index cards to complete an outline, you’d stroll over to the fiction section. In the library of my elementary school, there were orange-carpeted steps where you could lounge in your OshKosh B’Gosh overalls while consulting the World Book Encyclopedia for your report on Warren G.
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