Curious Footsteps

These feet are made for walkin, and gymnastics, and swimming and drawing and perler beading and watching "Harriet the Spy."

This past weekend Kenz spent three nights, count em, three nights wit Nana and Daba. My daughter was a bridesmaid in a wedding, an event that seemed like it was planned years ago. Anyhow, the day finally came and she flew away for R&R with old friends. Meanwhile, Daba and I were blessed with the presence of a real live princess, a talkative, curious creature who does not let a minute go by without using it wondrously. (This is Nana reporting.) And speaking of reporting, the movie "Harriet the Spy" is good. Kenz watched it twice. I knew the second time around she would get it, more of it anyway. The movie, as you may well know, is about a bright ten-year old who is addicted to her notebook. She is a spy. A spy on life. She has two close friends and a Nanny, Ole Golly (played by Rosie O'Donnell.)

Harriet wants nothing more in life than to record everything she sees, to grow up to be an author. She goes around her neighborhood looking in windows, watching people and observing life through her young eyes. Then she writes in her black and write composition notebook labeled PRIVATE. One day after a game of tag in the park, a classmate finds her notebook and exposes Harriet's thoughts to all.

Unfortunately for them (and more so for Harriet) some of the things she wrote didn't sound so nice. These aren't exact, but she wrote things like if I were the boy with the purple socks, I'd kill myself. She wrote about her friend Sport and his very poor family and about her chemistry-loving friend, she wrote something like, she might grow up to be a nut case. Anyhow, the thoughts from her heart get her in trouble with her friends who disown her.

After much harassing from both sides, the friends unite, knowing that Harriet is not unlike themselves, that is, we all have negative thoughts from time to time. We think thoughts about others, judge them and label them. This doesn't always mean we don't like them or don't want to be their friends. (This may not have been the intention of the film, but this was one way to look at it.)

I didn't tell you (of course, I told Kenz) that Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh was probably the best book I ever read in my adolescence. The movie (which came 32 years later) didn't strike me as being anything like the book, but that's OK because there can never be enough Harriets around. We need girls like her to encourage curiosity and the love of writing, two things I hope I never lose and two things I hope the incredible Kenz will always treasure.