Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 30, 1993                   TAG: 9309280174
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

A GOOD BOOK IS A FRIEND FOREVER

I was about 20, standing in the wood-floor corridor of South Elementary School, one hand clutching my notebook and the other clutching a big metal radiator.

I was supposed to be interviewing the new principal for my hometown newspaper, but all I could do was wander around the school slack-jawed.

Into the kindergarten classroom, where I remembered crying uncontrollably that first day of school. Into the cafeteria - that big, huge room with all the noise and food I'd never eaten before. I remember the rainy morning when my mom sent me to school with lunch money and told me to eat in the cafeteria for once instead of walking home for lunch. I snuck out and walked home in the rain anyway because I was so afraid of new things, new experiences.

Fifteen years later, the place was so. . . small.

There was that same familiar smell - a mixture of Murphy's Oil soap, chalkboard dust and stacks of skinny, musty books with fingerprints and dog-eared pages. But it looked so different, so completely reduced.

To a 5-year-old, the school was a big, scary world unto itself - rife with big and scary faces, big and scary expectations.

To a 20-year-old, the place was as threatening as a half-pint of chocolate milk.

The other day a friend gave me a copy of the children's classic "Goodnight, Moon," our in-utero baby's first book. Reading through it, I couldn't help but relive my own childhood reading experiences - although, unfortunately, few came to mind.

Unlike most people who write, I'm a relative newcomer to recreational reading. As a child, I much preferred outside games where running and tackling were involved to spending the day indoors with a book.

I wasted my fair share of time tuned in to "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie," and I regret like hell preferring the Cliff's Notes version of "Macbeth" over Shakespeare's in high school. One of my favorite books was "Catcher in the Rye" - but only because I liked searching out the dirty words.

I can't explain why I've always preferred writing to reading. My parents were voracious readers, often walking to the town library down our street twice a week.

My dominant memory of my dad, who died 10 years ago, is of him sitting at the kitchen table, his face in a paperback murder mystery. The only thing I ever saw him write was his barely legible signature - he'd dropped out of school in the seventh grade. But he read all the time.

My mom still reads so much that frequently she gets to the end of a novel and realizes she's already read it before. I've turned her on to some writers I've discovered since moving to the South, and already she's read the complete collections of Lee Smith, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ellen Gilchrist and Clyde Edgerton. On the phone the other day she told me her latest kick was "Price Reynolds," referring to Reynolds Price.

I want my child to appreciate books the way my mom always has. Which is what drew me so powerfully into the children's section of Rams Head Books last week, toward the F section of the novels, and finally to Louise Fitzhugh's "Harriet the Spy" - the first book I ever genuinely loved reading.

I remember my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Tobias, introducing me to the book and giving the class free reign to roam the room and sit wherever we wanted - as long as we read quietly. I remember sitting cross-legged underneath my desk reading about Harriet, a quirky, bespectacled sixth-grader who constantly took notes on her schoolmates, family and neighbors. Feeling especially sneaky and spylike, I'd put the book down every now and then, look around and jot down a sentence or two in my own notebook - just to be like Harriet the spy.

I'd forgotten the plot until last week when I reread the book, didn't remember how close Harriet was to her nanny, Ole Golly. I didn't remember how funny she was, either, jotting down such observances as, "ARE RICH PEOPLE EVER GOING TO GROW UP TO BE WRITERS OR ARE WRITERS ALL LIKE MR. ROCQUE WITH NO MONEY? MY FATHER IS ALWAYS SAYING STARVINGARTIST STARVINGWRITER. MAYBE I BETTER REDUCE."

I was amazed at how current the book, written in 1964, reads today - even by political correctness standards. The female characters are creative, smart and tough.

And though I'm sure it went over my head in the fourth grade, it also impressed me how individualistic Fitzhugh's characters are - particularly at an age when most kids are so focused on being exactly like everyone else.

I tried to explain to my husband how much "Harriet the Spy" meant to me last year when I came home from the eye doctor's office wearing my new pair of glasses - brown plastic frames with oval, Coke-bottle lenses.

Just like Harriet the Spy's.

Remember the last time you realized how little you've changed? For me it was the last time I looked at my childhood world through adult eyes.

I was in bed the other night with "Harriet the Spy," laughing at her antics, marveling at her prose, crying like crazy at the part where Ole Golly leaves her for a new life of her own.

And realizing that no matter how funny "Seinfeld" is, or how therapeutic it is to go outside for a long walk, sometimes there's nothing better than sitting down with an old friend and reading the night away.

Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, can't wait to reread "The Long Secret," the sequel to "Harriet the Spy." Her column runs Thursdays.