Trixie Belden

Adjunct Whore tagged me a while back for the 8 things meme and, because I am a Freak, I actually spent a few days pondering if there was really something (much less 8 things) interesting about me that you could not already glean from previous posts and, equally importantly, that I felt ok about sharing. Since I have been in the throes of PMS of late, most of the bullet points were, well, morose (insert litany of sad tales of childhood and self-deprecating whines of “I am so boring…nobody is interested in stupid me”).

And then I happened upon a post about summer reading contests. They still do those, don’t they? You know what I am talking about. The summer programs that kids sign up for to read as much as they can over the summer and then they get some sort of prize or reward or recognition.

Remember?

Well, I never did one of those.

And then I started to think about first books. The first book that I ever read, or even the story that I loved to have read to me. The same post also mentioned Golden Books. You know, the one’s that (at least used to) have the binding that was sort of goldeny and shiny and rubbed off a bit on your hands?

But I can’t remember my “first book” or the “favorite story.”

What I DO recall, though, is Trixie Belden. I was in love with Trixie Belden. Trixie was a kind of stocky, curly red-headed pre-teen/teen tomboy with an outgoing personality and an intense curiosity (hmmmmm). Trixie had it all: she came from relatively meager means and so had the perfect mix of a mostly square head on her shoulders, some common sense, intelligence (though not for math...hmmmmm), fearlessness and a penchant for seeing conspiracy and crime everywhere (a combination that all people from meager means just automatically have, you know). Plus she had the great fortune of living next to a big fancy house and an at-first-spoiled-but-then-became-cool-under-
Trixie’s-influence girl, Honey Wheeler, who was the same age and filthy rich. Honey had horses. And people who took care of horses.

Together they solved mysteries…kinda like Nancy Drew (whom I didn’t like as much for some reason).

I would spend hours locked in my darkened bedroom with a tiny lamp reading about Trixie’s adventures solving mysteries. When I was on the hour long bus ride to school or tuning out my family as we ate dinner or watched TV, I would daydream about hanging out with Trixie at Honey's fancy house and coming up with the clue that solved whatever mystery.

Of course, I eventually graduated from Trixie. I entered the tragic high schooler phase where I had to be artsy cool and so hung out with the other outcast wanna be artsy cool kids. We spent hours late night at Perkins driving the waitstaff crazy with small orders and teeny tips. We drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, devoured French fries dunked in mayo and mozzarella sticks coated in ketchup-like marinara, and pretended to have deep intellectual insights into Philip Roth or Kurt Vonnegut.

But in my heart, I was (and still remain) true to Trixie.