Are you ready for this?

When I was in sixth and seventh grade at Coral Springs Middle School in Florida, there were three things a girl had to have.  A polka dot mini skirt.  A small, white clutch.  A teen romance novel.

Here's the snag.  I wasn't allowed to read teen romance novels.  My father forbid it.  Something about seeing his daughter switch from "Little Women" and "I, Robot" to "Sweet Valley High" was more than he could take.

Luckily, those little, white clutches served a purpose beyond mere fashion sense; they were just the right size.  With my mother as a willing accomplice, I happily devoured literary crap and dreamed of the "bad boy" who secretly read books and had fine, upstanding morals.  Suddenly, my whole life seems clearer - lol.

Now, my father's number one teen novel villian was Judy Blume.  Judy Blume was verboten in my house.  Teen public enemy number one.

I once had to take a note to school explaining why I couldn't do my assigned book report.  No Judy Blume.  Too adult for little girls.  Talking about things little girls aren't ready for.

Neither of us knew how right he was.

This would become clear the month "Deenie" was the hot book in my circle of friends.  I begged and nagged and needled to be allowed to read it.  My father finally gave in and said he would read it, and if he deemed it suitable, then I could read it.  But by then, I had already read it, borrowing my friends' copies and reading it in stolen bits and pieces of time.  No way was I bringing unauthorized Judy Blume into the house!  And no way was I not going to play along with my father now.

Anyway, I'd read it, and I just knew there wasn't anything in there he could possibly object to.

I anxiously awaited my Judy Blume vindication.  Nothing there to object to, nothing at all.  Finally, he would see he was worried for nothing.

The word came down through my mother.  Verboten!

"Why!?" I asked.  What could it possibly be?

"Masturbation!" my mother threw at me, shocked.  "He says it talks about masturbation!"

I was dumbfounded.  Masturbation?  I had an idea of what that was.  I felt my brow furrow as I thought back through the book.

It was my father who stole that innocence, not Judy Blume.  For at that moment, I realized that Deenie's "special place," was not a magic elbow or knee as I'd imagined.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately as I reread "The Chronicles of Narnia."  I read them so long ago, long before "Sweet Valley High" and "Deenie."

Now when I read them, the Christianity is so blatant, so obvious.  I find it somewhat disturbing.  And yet...

I didn't see it back then.  Oh, I'm sure I was impressed by the message of faith in "Prince Caspian."  Lucy sees Aslan telling them to go one way, but her brothers and sister want to go the other way and she follows them into disaster.  Aslan tells her she should have come to him alone.  Trusted her faith in him, he says in so many words.  At its core, a message about believing in yourself, in what you know to be true.

But at the end of "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" the Christian message gets even more pronounced:

"Dearest," said Aslan very gently, "you and your brother will never come back to Narnia."

...

"It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy.  "It's you.  We shan't meet you there.  And how can we live, never meeting you?"

"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.

"Are -- are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.

"I am," said Aslan.  "But there I have another name.  You must learn to know me by that name.  This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

Does anyone have a very large shovel?

My point though, is that we often don't see things we aren't ready for.  I'm not arguing that we can't be influenced anyway.  But it is a fascinating phenomenon.

"Life doesn't bring us anything we can't handle," some people say.  I think that's a bit naive.

But it's reassuring to know that all C.S. Lewis accomplished was to deepen my interest in fawns and centaurs and magical lands.  I heard the messages about right and wrong, but I missed the religion completely.

Perhaps what it really is, is that we take what we want, and we leave the rest.

So I guess I leave masturbation to the Christians.  Wait a minute, that's not quite right...