I didn’t mean to start reading her. Really, the books are about a girl going to nursing school—how girly can you get? But I didn’t plan on the conspiracy.
It started out when my sisters got a Cherry Ames box set for Christmas. Those four books, each sporting Cherry’s florid, smiling face, looked innocent enough, but somehow they kept popping up everywhere, like on our coffee table, the back seat of our car, or our kitchen counter.
Then, every night when I was diligently working on my physics homework, I could hear Cherry’s cheerful voice in the background... Well, not really. I’m not crazy yet. I could actually hear Mater reading Cherry’s books aloud to my younger sisters. Every night Mater reads them a story before bed, and as their bedroom is right next to mine I can just hear the calm rhythm of her voice through the wall, but not discern the actual words. Usually Indigo and I, the older siblings, have already read the book they’re on, so tuning it out isn’t a problem, but as I’ve already said, I would not have picked up a...nurse book...of my own accord.
Indigo started reading Cherry Ames too. Now that every other girl in my family was in Cherry’s gasp, they kept finding references to her everywhere. This relative’s comment was just like one Cherry made; that dish was one Cherry ate in the army; this person had the same name as Cherry’s crush. There seemed to be no relief from her, and I never had a clue what they were talking about. Every silly Cherry reference flew right over my head, while they all giggled like members of a kindergarteners’ secret club.
February dragged on. I had scorned Cherry for two months. The sky seemed eternally grey, the snow banks were melting into black curds, and I was neck deep in homework. The only books I had read all month were texts full of electronegativity and actinides and relative velocity. Summer seemed years away. But still, in a distant corner of the weary world, those cheeks so akin to Santa’s nose burned merrily.
I caved.
Yes, she was a nurse, whose idea of excitement was feeding grumpy patients or dancing with handsome doctors, but I couldn’t help but like her. The Cherry Ames books are so different from most books written now. Eighteen-year-old girls of modern fiction all seem to be contemplating suicide or mooning after vampires, so even in a world of antiseptic and starchy aprons, Cherry is like a breath of fresh air. She is just so optimistic. I can’t agree with her that a stone and steel medical laboratory is the best place in the world, but whether she is faced with third degree burns or giant rubber dolls or Snape-esque doctors, she forges on with a smile and squared shoulders. Plus she has lots of funny phrases you never hear any more, like “buck up” and “darnedest.” So she has about twenty books in which she works as everything from a “chief nurse” to a “jungle nurse,” and she’s never short of a handsome young intern to back her up, and every patient loves her...but so what. Her dauntless enthusiasm is just what I needed to see me through this glum February and its reams of physics homework. Cherry can cheer up orphaned children and wounded soldiers, so I should have realized I would pose no challenge to her.
Cherry Ames and covers are © 1944 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc./2006 by Harriet Schulman Foreman
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