Daring

So I bought a copy of "The Daring Book for Girls." I kind of wanted to see what all the fuss was about - I remember when the boy-version (which is by different authors; this one is actually sort of an "inspired-by") came out, it was alternately praised and excoriated. And some people just kind of scratched their heads.

These are great big compendium books (in case you totally ignore the "children-and-teen" section of the bookstore or live under a rock). The Girl's book - the only one I've looked at - has a lot of rules-of-games (basketball, something called netball, softball, tetherball, even hopscotch. But not Badminton, which is one of my favorite easy-for-even-kind-of-lazy-people games of all times. You can even play Badminton in a dress - I have. I knew Indian ladies who played it in their saris - there was a large Indian community in the town where I used to live, and they used to get together a lot, and for some reason Badminton was a very popular game. But I digress)

It also tells you how to build a scooter, and how to change a car tire, and how to make ivy crowns. And how to whistle with two fingers in your mouth, which I really really want to learn to do (it would be extremely useful in the field, if I needed to call all my students together quickly) but have not yet managed, despite a number of trials.

It also has the typical you-go-girl stuff about women scientists and inventors and famous queens.

(Did you know Hedy Lamarr - yes, that Hedy Lamarr - helped invent some kind of code-breaking thing that was used against the Germans in World War II? I didn't.)

All proto-feminism aside, I like the book a lot. I look at it, and I go, "I wish this had been around 25 or 30 years ago, when I was a girl." It is exactly the kind of book I loved - packed with information, lots of odd little things, skills you can perfect, stuff to learn that's cool. And the you-go-girl stuff would have impressed me, too. I remember doing a lot of book reports on Famous Women (two memorable ones being Maria Mitchell - who, oddly, is not mentioned among the women scientists and inventors - and Annie Oakley.)

Actually, another digression: when I was a kid, a lot of times when we did "book reports" on biographies we read, or historical reports on a person, we were required to dress up as that person and present the life as if that person were speaking. I loved that. (My mom, who I would have to hit up at least once a year for "a floor-length dark skirt and dark shawl" (for Mitchell, who was a Quaker) or some kind of ethnic costume for some woman from Europe, probably didn't love it so much). I suppose schools still do this - I hope they do, because I loved doing it. It was a lot of fun. (And part of the fun was seeing the other students going through the day in their getups. I learned fairly early on to pick people like Mitchell who dressed plainly and comfortably enough).

Anyway. A few people commenting on the books noted they didn't like the title "Daring," that "why do Boys get to be Dangerous but Girls are only Daring?"

But you know? I personally like Daring better than Dangerous. For two reasons: first of all, Daring has the connotation of doing something good, something useful - for example, Josephine Baker working for the French Resistance during WWII. That's useful but it's also dangerous. And it takes considerable daring.

It seems to me that it's entirely possible to be Dangerous and also stupid, but it is far less likely to be Daring and stupid.

I also like Daring better than Dangerous because to me, it seems to have more elan - James Bond (at least the "classic," Moore or Connery Bonds) was Daring, but his enemies were merely Dangerous. Daring, to me, seems to have a sense of style to it - a little smirk in the face of real danger, the ability to do things smoothly and well to get out of it.

I would much rather be a Daring Girl (well, the ship probably sailed on "girl" 10 or more years ago, at least in the chronological sense) than a Dangerous Girl. Unfortunately, in this life, my lot seems to be less to be Daring than to be Responsible.

(If I were writing my own parody or "answer" to this series {and yes, there are parodies - there is now the Dangerous Book for Dogs}, I would probably title it

The Responsible Book for Adults.)

And I would talk about things like balancing checkbooks, and leaving notes on people's windshields if you ding their car door with theirs in a parking lot, and being on time to meetings, especially if you are the one who called the meeting. Of course the book wouldn't sell because that kind of stuff is boring and the people who would read it already live it, and probably most of the people who need to read it, wouldn't. But I have to admit a certain longing for a "Handbook for Adulthood" - I really and truly (when I was like 8 or so) believed that there was a handbook you were given, probably on your 18th birthday or so, that explained all the stuff adults were supposed to do and know. Of course no such handbook exists and we are all essentially making it up as we go along, but frankly, I WOULD like to have a handbook. Oh, I have Emily Post and some kind of book about Investing for the Fiscal Idiot and another one about not getting one's feelings hurt, but none of these books has quite the encyclopedic completeness, or the secret knowledge, that I assumed this mythical Handbook for Adulthood would hold.

But at any rate - while one's on the way - I suppose something like a Daring or a Dangerous book makes the journey more fun, and perhaps more remembered once one is an adult.