Girlish Things

The school in town is bringing us to familiar ground. Growing up isn't all corsets and voice modulation, even on the frontier there's room for the fads and fancies of the teenage girl. Instead of slam books, lip smackers and drawing a penis on your drunk and passed out friend's face, the girls have autograph books. You use your best handwriting to share a poem, moral homily or bible verse. Just as fun.

Here's what the orphan girl Ida wrote in Laura's autograph book:

In memory's golden casket,

Drop one pearl for me.

Your loving friend,

Ida B. Wright

"In memory's golden casket, drop one pearl for me," is totally the "2 good, 2B, 4 gotten" of the 19th century.

But most important, obviously, boys. BOYS!! There are really only two truly eligible bachelors out on the prairie this year. Obviously, Almanzo Wilder, and also his partner in the grain rescue mission during the Long Winter, Cap Garland. According to Laura, Cap's smile, "flashed quick as lightening and warmer than sunshine." Not a bad thing to be known for, but while Laura appreciates a good smile when she see's one, the real competition for Cap's affections is between stupid Nellie and Laura's rich-girl friend Mary Powers. Actually, it's not really a competition since Mary likes Cap, and Cap likes Mary, but these people have been raised to be so polite that it's practically impossible to get any courting done.

Cap shows up every day at lunch with a little bag of store bought candy for Mary but as soon as he walks in the door Nellie grabs it out of his hand and is all, Oh, swoon! Cappie how did you know I love candy? And aren't you the tallest, strongest and most precious thing that every walked the face of the ....barf. And no one says a thing while she goes ahead and jams the candy down her maw. That just wouldn't be polite.

This happens three days in a row and everyone just glances at each other nervously till finally Laura just grabs the bag out of Nellie's hand (mid "Oo-oo Cappie") and plops it into Mary's. Laura's the hero, Nellie looks a fool and Cap and Mary exchange a relieved glance, which may constitute common law marriage.

Of course afterwards Nellie's all, I didn't want him anyway and, lets the other girls know that, "It's that chum of his I want to know, that young Mr. Wilder with the funny name. You'll see...I'm going riding behind those horses of his."

Yeah well, we'll see who'll be riding behind whose horses so...there! When I say "who'll" of course I mean Laura, and when I say Laura, I mean it actually happens during this post!!!!!

Backtrack. Along with autograph books and burgeoning sexuality, the other big teen fad out on the Prairie this fall is name cards. What? You haven't heard of the paper sensation that's sweeping our newly formed nation? Name cards are these awesome pastel cards with a picture of a flower, or a bunch of flowers, or a bunch of flowers and a bird on one side, and your name on the other.

Pretty awesome huh? Of course, now I want some. They'd be useless though because just having name cards isn't good enough. Everyone has to have some because the fun is in exchanging your name card for a friend's. Back in DeSmet this is complicated by the fact that there's only really 5 girls mature enough for name cards, and to get 12 cards printed cost the astronomical sum of 25 cents. Upity Nellie gets them, of course, and Mary Powers and Minnie Johnson have rich fathers so they'll get them. As an orphan Ida Wright has already been given the gift of a loving Christian home so she can't really ask for anything additional. She'll just enjoy looking at the other girl's cards.

But what about Laura? She knows it's "folly even to think of spending twenty -five cents for mere pleasure." On the other hand, as a teenager, pleasure's the very most important thing to spend money on. Torn, she slyly brings it up at night to Ma and Pa, who wisely intuit that her social life will be ruined if she can't get some of those "new fangled" name cards. I have to say, Ma and Pa have been uncharacteristically cool this book. They picked up Laura's autograph book in Vinton, the town where Mary's school is located, so she could be ahead of the social curve and now they're going to fork over the cash (or single coin) to make a teenage dream come true. Aw.

After a night of beating herself up for wasting the family's money, Laura picks out a nice pink card with roses and cornflowers. And then, OMG when she goes to pick them up it takes too long and now she's running late for school and Ohmygod Ohmygod! who comes riding up to the rescue, but Almanzo! And more importantly, his horses. Would Laura like a ride behind the horses the rest of the way to school?

The funniest thing about the ride was that Almanzo was obviously making the horses go slow to make the trip last longer, and all Laura could think about is how she wishes he'd make them gallop. She's a woman with a need for speed. They exchange name cards (his, manly and plain) and best of all everyone (by which I mean Nellie) sees them pull up to school together. Sees Almanzo help Laura down.

"She barely touched his glove with her mitten tip."

And with that mitten tip, it begins.