SO MUCH FOR YOU, NANCY DREW

Greetings Hairballers,

Hockey season is over and I’m spending an inordinate amount of time contemplating the useless and trivial.  The topic of the moment is Nancy Drew.  Women, especially, will remember those books we read as kids.  I gobbled them up around age 10.  Dad even expressed concern that I was reading “hard boiled” mysteries until Mom told him to read one.  His comment:  “not hard boiled, but thin, very thin.”

SO MUCH FOR YOU, NANCY DREW©

         FM Horner

Never a bad hair day

your blonde pageboy sat,

like a helmet upon your head,

no errant chunks sticking out like wings,

a 90-mile an hour wind would not have disturbed it

were you a republican?

you drove a convertible, a gift from your Dad,

the widowed lawyer,

while every other teenager in the 50s

begged to borrow their parents’ car

then filled it with all of their friends

to cruise the parking lot at Bob’s Big Boy,

you drove around with your boyfriend

in the passenger seat,

that guy with the shinny straight teeth,

perfect clothes and perfect manners--

and absolutely no sex drive at all,

unless it was off the page were the reader didn’t go

back to your Dad, the widowed single parent,

you never mentioned your Mother

did you not ever wonder what she was like,

yearn to talk to her about “girl” things,

or did you think she existed only to produce you?

Okay, job well done I’m outta here! Right.

you didn’t change your clothes 17 times

before going out the door

or scream at the mirror because

your butt was too big and your boobs to small

or curse the world because you didn’t live

in France or the West Village

Nancy Drew, you had no flaws,

to me now, you aren’t interesting,

but my 10-year old mind loved

reading those books and seeing

you solve mysteries

that the bumbling police couldn’t figure out

Hairballs for now,

f