Books are delicious
I just re-read Just as Long as We’re Together by Judy Blume. This is one that I remember loving as a kid, like seriously adoring, although when it came down to it all I could remember is that it’s the one about the girl (Stephanie) who has a best friend (Rachel) and then gets another best friend (Alison) and they try to all be best friends, but one is always left out and there is a big fight. Which certainly does happen, but there’s also a rather major parents-getting-seperated plot. This results in Stephanie, our protagonist becoming depressed and using food to comfort herself while striking out at her mother and father.
There were odd little things I remembered from the book, like Stephanie and Alison going to Alison’s Grandmother’s house to bake brownies and then the Gran teaches them how to dance the rhumba. Or the bit where Rachel and Stephanie have a screaming fight in a dressing room. Chelle? This is the one with the boy with the apple shampoo as well. So I’d remembered those small things but not the overall plot.
I enjoyed it very much, anyway, and am looking forward to the other Judy Blume books I got out from the library.
I suppose this all ties in with my fascination for tween-teen girl psychology (re: Mean Girls, Queen Bees and Wannabees, Best Friends. When I was about ten I had a very Just as Long as We’re Together kind of thing happen. My best friend of many years called me up one day and told me that she wasn’t having Best Friends anymore, that it wasn’t fair, so she was just going to have Close Friends. But then the next day at school she had a new Best Friend. I was just kind of left out. I eventually found an awesome new Best Friend, but it still hurt like crazy at the time.
I would dearly love an answer to the question of how and why girls get so very mean around the 9-13 age…it can’t just be hormones can it? I kind of think it has something to do with all those years of ‘playing nicely’ and ‘being good’ and ’sugar and spice and all things nice’ and gaining your independence from it. Then there’s that theory that girl Best Friend relationships are like trial romances…all the intensity and closeness, and then you have to break them off in order to experience a proper romantic relationship. Does anyone have any other theories? I’d love to hear them. Especially since I want to remain Cool Auntie Jenni and be supportive of my various nieces when the girls in their classes start to get bitchy.
PoF: Oscar the recycler
CO: Three year anniversary plans
Zephfi replied:
well, most of my closest friends in Form 2 dropped me like a hot potato for several months because the most popular boy in my class told them to. which was, in turn, because i’d refused to ditch a friend that he didn’t like. i don’t recall being unconsolably happy about it at the time, mainly because i was so *incensed* that someone would deign to try and control me like that. also, righteous anger is quite a satisfying emotion! i recall that being the year that i declared i didn’t hate anyone (which would be a very unCatholic thing to do), but i definitely “disliked him with an intensity that was frightening”.
i spent most of my ‘tweens’ being intentionally contrary, and often doing things because someone in my peer group said that they were uncool. there was something empowering about someone else being impotently aggravated that i wouldn’t kow-tow to them. so i think that was protective against getting hurt by social politics.
January 5, 2009 at 19:31. Permalink.
sok replied:
I think there’s also an odd kind of freedom there. People have always been telling you to be nice and then you realise you don’t actually *have* to. Hopefully a bit later on you realise you should anyway…
I wonder if you were brought up to be horrible if you would rebel by being kind to people?
And maybe being bitchy is a way to make yourself feel like the boss or in control of a situation, when the rest of your life at that point, is in other people’s hands.
I’m extrapolating wildly here, having always been nearer the bottom of the social heirarchy, but usually too little trouble to tease mercilessly. Yeah. When I think about it it’s probably because there was at least one other kid always below me in the social strata at primary and intermediate! Lucky or what??
I like being grown up
January 5, 2009 at 22:30. Permalink.
Sass replied:
I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that a lot of kids (I think) are friends because of proximity rather than common ground etc (ie. the reasons why a lot of friends are made in later life) so it’s theoretically a lot easier to break and re-make the ties. I remember I found out I had lost my best friend who had moved suburbs and gone to another school when she stopped inviting me to her birthday party. Which was pretty much the death knell for any primary school relationship.
January 6, 2009 at 07:51. Permalink.
jennitalula replied:
I think the proximity thing is a bigger issue than we’d admit as kids. Judy Blume actually touches on it in ‘JaLaWT’ as well. I remember a girl leaving my school and going to Marsden and how none of us ever saw her like, ever again, even though she lived on the same street as three other kids in my class.
January 6, 2009 at 08:29. Permalink.
Zephfi replied:
then again, proximity is a big thing for adult relationships too. think of all those work-mates you’ve formed close bonds with (“work” itself isn’t really any more common ground than “school” a lot of the time), and mum is forever going on about the friendships she made with people based on no more common ground than that they had kids at the same time (again, friendships formed based on a life event/situation).
proximity itself *gives* a shared interest. i don’t think it means that it’s any less valid than a reason to form a friendship than a common hobby, for e.g. that being said, friendships based primarily on such a probably more at risk of fragmenting if distance becomes a factor.
January 6, 2009 at 17:57. Permalink.
amelia replied:
i really liked ‘just as long as we’re together’ as well & i could definitely relate to it. have you read the sequel to it? it’s called ‘here’s to you, rachel robinson’ & it’s from rachel’s pov (obviously). that’s a good book too. as for the bitchiness of young girls i think it coms down to insecurity & jealousy.
when i was 8 i was the third wheel in my friendship with 2 other girls who were best friends but the roles could change regularly. i always seem to be the target of exclusion (e.g popular girls shunning me) all the way through high school. my mum relieves at primary school every now and then & she was telling she reckons young girls are a lot nastier to each other. she was telling me how one girl had flushed a present that another girl had given to her because she didn’t like the gift giver.
January 6, 2009 at 19:53. Permalink.