A Great Day, A Great Day, A Great Day

"I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus. 

"Then stop acting like a pest," said Beezus, whose real name was Beatrice. She was standing by the front window waiting for her friend Mary Jane to walk to school with her. (It’s like “Antigone”! The definition of a tragedy is a fight in which both sides are correct. Re-reading the opening of “Ramona the Pest” is so therapeutic for me, because people in my workplace behave like children and create melodramas on an hourly basis. I think Katy Perry and Taylor Swift would also benefit from a re-reading of "Ramona.")

"I'm not acting like a pest. I'm singing and skipping," said Ramona, who had only recently learned to skip with both feet. Ramona did not think she was a pest. No matter what others said, she never thought she was a pest. The people who called her a pest were always bigger and so they could be unfair. Ramona went on with her singing and skipping. "This is a great day, a great day, a great day!" she sang, and to Ramona, who was feeling grown-up in a dress instead of play clothes, this was a great day, the greatest day of her whole life. No longer would she have to sit on her tricycle watching Beezus and Henry Huggins and the rest of the boys and girls in the neighborhood go off to school. Today she was going to school, too. Today she was going to learn to read and write and do all the things that would help her catch up with Beezus. (The miracle of Beverly Cleary is that she can slip so easily into a child’s perspective. It is indeed a major shift to go from sitting on the tricycle to walking to school. And yet how many of us have recalled this sensation recently? Ramona began as a bit player; she would pop up as a little antagonist in the Henry Huggins books. Then she had main-villainess status in “Beezus and Ramona,” whose subversive message is: Sometimes it’s OK to hate your sister. Finally, Cleary realized she was so enchanted by Ramona that Ramona needed her own book. Anne Lamott describes this phenomenon: Write enough about your childhood best friend, and you might just discover that the story you really need to tell is about your old, mute neighbor, whose house you never entered. Could we say the same thing has happened in Taylor Swift’s career? A crazed-schemer persona began to stick out her neck in “Bad Blood” and “Blank Space,” and now that persona has her own first-release soliloquy, currently breaking records all over the place. Lastly, critic Bruce Handy suggests—provocatively—that “Ramona the Pest” is Cleary’s real masterpiece, and that it deserved the Newbury. He says waiting to hand Cleary that award for “Dear Mr. Henshaw” is like overlooking “Taxi Driver” and giving Scorsese the Oscar for “The Departed.” Well, I don’t know. I think Cleary basically deserved a Newbury for every single novel she wrote. Handy compares her to Mark Twain, but I’ll go further than that. I’ll say her writing is more memorable than Twain’s. Cleary was almost never boring or self-indulgent; you can’t say that about Twain.)

"Come on, Mama!" urged Ramona, pausing in her singing and skipping. "We don't want to be late for school."

"Don't pester, Ramona," said Mrs. Quimby. "I'll get you there in plenty of time."

"I'm not pestering," protested Ramona, who never meant to pester. She was not a slow poke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.

Then Mary Jane arrived. "Mrs. Quimby, would it be all right if Beezus and I take Ramona to kindergarten?" she asked.

"No!" said Ramona instantly (Notice MJ does not bother to ask Ramona--the little big-for-her-britches twit!). Mary Jane was one of those girls who always wanted to pretend she was a mother and who always wanted Ramona to be the baby. Nobody was going to catch Ramona being a baby on her first day of school. (Indeed. One of those girls. Life is so challenging!)

"Why not?" Mrs. Quimby asked Ramona. "You could walk to school with Beezus and Mary Jane just like a big girl."

"No, I couldn't." Ramona was not fooled for an instant. Mary Jane would talk in that silly voice she used when she was being a mother and take her by the hand and help her across the street, and everyone would think she really was a baby.

"Please, Ramona," coaxed Beezus. "It would be lots of fun to take you in and introduce you to the kindergarten teacher."

"No!" said Ramona, and stamped her foot. Beezus and Mary Jane might have fun, but she wouldn't. Nobody but a genuine grownup was going to take her to school. If she had to, she would make a great big noisy fuss, and when Ramona made a great big noisy fuss, she usually got her own way. Great big noisy fusses were often necessary when a girl was the youngest member of the family and the youngest person on her block. (Do you notice the gap between the things Ramona thinks and the things she is capable of articulating? And Cleary’s instinctive—and yet unsentimental—regard for the feelings of the powerless? And the ways in which power struggles erupt for tiny reasons? Who walks with Ramona, what is the definition of a pest, what kind of voice should you use in a conversation—These are seemingly trivial issues, and yet they are not. Someone’s ego is on the line.)

"All right, Ramona," said Mrs. Quimby. "Don't make a great big noisy fuss. If that's the way you feel about it, you don't have to walk with the girls. I'll take you.”

"Hurry, Mama," said Ramona happily, as she watched Beezus and Mary Jane go out the door. But when Ramona finally got her mother out of the house, she was disappointed to see one of her mother's friends, Mrs. Kemp, approaching with her son Howie and his little sister Willa Jean, who was riding in a stroller.

"Hurry, Mama," urged Ramona, not wanting to wait for the Kemps. Because their mothers were friends, she and Howie were expected to get along with one another. (Killer insight, stated with economy. Jane Austen would be proud.)

"Hi, there!" Mrs. Kemp called out, so of course Ramona's mother had to wait. Howie stared at Ramona. He did not like having to get along with her any more than she liked having to get along with him. Ramona stared back. Howie was a solid-looking boy with curly blond hair. ("Such a waste on a boy," his mother often remarked.) The legs of his new jeans were turned up, and he was wearing a new shirt with long sleeves. He did not look the least bit excited about starting kindergarten. That was the trouble with Howie, Ramona felt. He never got excited. Straight-haired Willa Jean, who was interesting to Ramona because she was so sloppy, blew out a mouthful of wet zwieback crumbs and laughed at her cleverness.

"Today my baby leaves me," remarked Mrs. Quimby with a smile, as the little group proceeded down Klickitat Street toward Glenwood School. Ramona, who enjoyed being her mother's baby, did not enjoy being called her mother's baby, especially in front of Howie. (The drama of the Divided Self! Later in this story, Ramona will become entranced by Susan’s boing boing curls. Susan will become an antagonist for the ages; she will make an appearance decades, literally decades, later, in the final Cleary novel—“Ramona’s World.” Susan “acts big,” which is a terrible crime in kindergarten. She calls Ramona “a pest,” and it’s not her place to do so. All she can offer is the boing boing curls—lush, springy. It is an overwhelming temptation to channel one’s aggression and irritation through a tug on those boing boing curls. After all, bad feelings must find a way to express themselves; Ramona is too young to have a drinking habit. Ramona’s teacher—Miss Binney—sternly asks if Ramona can control herself; can Ramona promise never to tug on the curls again? Ramona—being Ramona—thinks seriously and realizes that the answer is NO. She cannot make that promise, despite what one part of her might wish. And so she is sort of faux-expelled—for a week. Ramona is my hero. I, too, would like to tug on some curls.)

"They grow up quickly," observed Mrs. Kemp. Ramona could not understand why grownups always talked about how quickly children grew up. Ramona thought growing up was the slowest thing there was, slower even than waiting for Christmas to come. She had been waiting years just to get to kindergarten, and the last half hour was the slowest part of all. (Bruce Handy writes about seeing the world with “new eyes and new ears.” He says that a children’s writer must capture this sensation. “I don’t really like children, or I don’t have some special fondness for them, as a group,” said Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon. "What I can offer is that I’m interested in the things that children are interested in. There’s a difference.” I suspect that Beverly Cleary—far from a dewy-eyed, soft-voiced pre-K teacher—would say something similar. There’s so much potential wonder and excitement and conflict in a simple walk around the block. Cleary reminds us of this; she splashes some water in our jaded eyes. So: I hope that’s useful back-to-school reading. I feel better, having written it.)

***P.S. Did you note that line about Ramona's learning to write? Has any novelist ever extracted more juice from the drama of the mechanics of penmanship? Muggie Maggie is a riveting account of one person's refusal to learn cursive. Ramona herself will encounter titanic struggles with her letter "Q." And the spelling lists! This is Beverly Cleary. This is an unusually fertile imagination.