Just Like Polly

I just re-read 'An Old Fashioned Girl' by Louisa May Alcott. About ten years ago it was my favourite book and I read it 'all the time'. My reading pattern at that time looked something like this:

'An Old Fashioned Girl'
Something Else
'An Old Fashioned Girl'
Something Else
'An Old Fashioned Girl'

And so on and so forth!

More than anything else, when I was 13 or 14, I wanted to be just like Polly Milton, the heroine of 'An Old Fashioned Girl'. (Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to be Polly!)

'An Old Fashioned Girl' begins when Polly is 14 years old. She's the eldest daughter of a poor-but-happy country parson and his wife, the eldest surviving sibling of many brothers and sisters. She still dresses like a little girl and thinks of herself as such, until she goes to stay with her rich and fashionable friends - Fanny and Tom Shaw - in the big city. She faces various small trials and tribulations, all of which I could identify with when I was 14 years old. Through it all, she's nice to everyone and brightens her friends' lives.

Polly was a teenager in the 1860s and I was a teenager in the 1990s, but there were a lot of similarities between us - starting with the fact that we were both the eldest daughters of large families, we were both little girls when our contemporaries thought they were young women, we were both shy. These similarities became the foundation for a deep respect for Polly and an earnest desire to be just like her.

Thus it was that when I was 14, when my family and I were attending a new church in a strange country, when I was overwhelmed and lonely, I deliberately set out to emulate Polly. She wasn't ashamed of her family, so I determined not to be ashamed of mine. She didn't mind being a little girl at 14, so I decided not to mind it either. She was nice to people and brightened their lives in spite of being shy, so I went out of my way to be nice to people and smile at everyone. Being 'just like Polly' was fun, but ...

One week after chuch, I was bored and lonely. The few people I vaguely knew were busy and I felt left out of the inner circle of the church youth group. I wandered aimlessly around for a while, before discovering my youngest sister and her friends playing. They were playing 'Cinderella', but no one wanted to be Prince Charming. I remembered that Polly was never too tired or bored to play with little children, so I volunteered to be Prince Charming. Great ... I was happy, they were happy ...

At the ball, prompted by my sister and her friends, I singled out Cinderella and asked her to dance. We all sang along as I waltzed the little girl along the passage and back again. She was about half my size and kept hopping on my toes, but she had fun. And, oddly, I had fun too and forgot to be bored or lonely. I waltzed back up the passage ... right into a crowd of the few people I vaguely knew and wanted to impress with my 'maturity' and 'adulthood'.

For a moment, time seemed to stand still. I had no idea how long they had been standing there watching, but it was clear that they had already seen too much. Way too much. Abruptly, I stopped waltzing and leaped away from my sister and her friends, trying to put as much distance as possible between myself and playing 'Cinderella'.

The eldest and prettiest girl I knew asked, "Are you teaching her to waltz?"

Surprised, I looked at my shoes and blushed and mumbled, "Um ... no. I'm Prince Charming and she's Cinderella. They were playing 'Cinderella' and I was ... er ..."

The same girl raised her eyebrows and said, "Oh." Over her shoulder, the rest of the crowed peeped at me, perplexed and amused.

I hurried my family home from church and cried with embarrassment and mortification! The fact that I was trying to be 'just like Polly' was my one comfort. (And I must admit that although it was a comfort, it was only a small comfort!)

However, I should add that being 'just like Polly' brought me more than I had hoped for. It was after this surprising and embarrassing incident that the few people I vaguely knew became friendlier and that I was accepted into the inner circle of the church youth group. So perhaps being 'just like Polly' was no bad thing after all.

Re-reading 'An Old Fashioned Girl' nine or ten years later, I think that if I ever have daughters of my own some day, I'll give them 'An Old Fashioned Girl' to read and encourage them to be 'just like Polly' too!