I started young. I must have sensed how really useless was the knowledge I took home from elementary school. There was no wisdom to be gained from early forays into history, science or math, although feeding the classroom hamsters seemed to have some relevance to the all-important meaning of life. I quickly learned to escape, to seek out other sources for the knowledge I so desperately needed to survive in the cold, dark world. Joe and Frank Hardy became my guides.
For a prepubescent only child, Franklin W. Dixon's creations were role models. Frank and Joe taught little boys how to be men. Working in tandem to solve The Mystery of Devil's Paw and other evildoings over the course of the lengthy series, the Hardy Boys defined camaraderie. Together, there was no mystery left unsolved. I had no idea what it meant to rely on someone who was not only a sibling, but a best friend. They became both for me. Hey, it was better than an imaginary playmate. (Even though I had one of those too.)
To me, Frank and Joe were real, and everything I aspired to. They were smart and good-looking. In short, they were the epitome of cool. What's more, they had ultrababe Nancy Drew as their counterpart.
Forget Farrah Fawcett. Early on, I knew there would be no airheaded bleached blondes for me, no matter how sultry they looked in a red swimsuit while flashing those pearly whites. I needed a woman of independence: Nancy Drew was everything Frank and Joe were, only with breasts. She didn't need a man. Though she had the help of her friends, she could solve mysteries all on her own. With her titian hair and brains, she was intoxicating; a woman who could stand up for herself. Nancy Drew was everything I eventually sought in my romantic entanglements.
What the hell was I thinking? Maybe I should have gone for some beautiful bimbo to wait on me hand and foot and agree with my every thought. Nice fantasy. Too boring. Nancy Drew ruined my love life. Thanks to author Carolyn Keene, I am a very attractive man approaching 30 without a romantic equal.
But that's what I get for being such a bookworm during my formative years. The books were always meant to be fun, escapist fantasy, a child-oriented version of trashy literature. However, there was so much more to be learned from them than just The Secret in the Old Attic. In the wake of my single mom doing her best but working extraordinarily long hours, I needed guidance. Sure, she was there to impart all the important life lessons: Don't do drugs. Practice safe sex. Don't buy anything that's not on sale. Books became a surrogate to fill in the blanks where Mom could not.
After all, could Mom really play the father figure and teach her son how to fight? Yeah, at verbal arguments she was topnotch, but landing a few punches wasn't Mom's strong suit. Hey, she's a girl, for Pete's sake! Fortunately, I had the Greasers and the Socs. Through S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, I learned a little bit about standing up for myself.
Like the Curtis brothers and their friends, I too had felt on the outside of things. I was picked on in junior high. The "cool" kids called me names and hocked loogies at me. It was a special time. And then like Johnny I eventually exploded, beating up the hyperactive bully from down the street who suffered from stunted growth. No longer was I the scrawny kid. Okay, so I was still the scrawny kid. But I was also a force to be reckoned with. No one would mess with me any longer. Well, that wasn't true. The verbal abuse continued into high school. But as Hinton showed, you're not really a man until you stand up for yourself, and beat the crap out of someone half your size.
So it was proven I could take care of myself, but I still needed some help in the romance department. My graduation from Hardy Boys into Agatha Christie mysteries taught me how to bludgeon people to death, but would that really turn the girls on? Actually, with regards to a couple of my ex-girlfriends, it probably would have. But I was still seeking my quintessential Nancy Drew. The closest I could find to help in the romance department was Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero, if you can call that help. Sure, it taught me all the ins and outs of being a drug addict, but that's not really what I was seeking. However, Ellis did teach the importance of acceptance. Thanks to him, some of my best friends were bisexual cokeheads, and I never judged them for it.
But as a young man, I never found the requisite textbook on love and relationships. Sure, women had their Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins novels, which I'm sure have scarred them for life. Thanks to them and others of their ilk, women never know a good thing when they see it.
Uh, that good thing would be me. So what if I wasn't a perfectly chiseled wealthy foreign businessman? I had at least ... well ... none of that going for me. But I would persevere despite never reading romance novels! Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins be damned!
In the meantime, I knew I needed a backup. I had to prepare myself for the possibility that I could potentially be alone. Frank and Joe showed me how to work as part of a team, but I also needed to be self-sufficient. I could do this. I could count on myself. The groundwork had already been laid before me. I had been taught how to make hard decisions. The Choose Your Own Adventure series took me under the sea and into outer space, prompting me to decide my fate. How perfect. I read a page or two, weighed my options and made my own decision. What better way to truly become a man of confidence, one capable of being a leader? Though in crafting my own story, I almost always died. It was usually some terrible, grisly end, showing that I was mostly capable of making the wrong decisions. It was very much a preview of my real life, except that I've never been eaten by a shark.
It was the final stage, making it absolutely official. I knew all that I needed to be a man, except for the ways of the flesh. (I discovered those on my own). I can't give school the credit. Mom, God love her, did what she could, but it wasn't enough. Thanks to books, I was a self-taught man of the world. ©
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