Secret Diary

We are often asked what is daring about The Daring Book for Girls. Some reporters and interviewers ask it with a shade of sarcasm, even, as if to imply that the activities aren’t very daring at all. It goes without saying that these same reporters are usually in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, and they’ve forgotten what daring feels like when you are young.

I was reminded of this earlier tonight. We had received a phantom Halloween bag this morning at our front door. Along with the candy came a phantom picture to put on our front window and directions to wait until dark, pack two bags of candy, and deliver them–with copies of the phantom picture and the directions–to two friends. The only caveat: make sure that whoever gets them doesn’t already have a phantom picture in their window. It’s not a popularity contest, but a sharing of the love.

We don’t know who delivered ours, except to say there was a similar bag on our neighbor’s doorstep, and a suspicious phantom picture already posted in the window of our neighbor two doors down.

So today, we bought some candy, dropped some in each of two paper lunch bags, and after dark, set out in the van to drop them off. At first my older daughter was blase. To my obvious delight at the phantom-bags–what a wonderful community activity!–my daughter shrugged her shoulders. Well, that was before she got a taste of the special thrill of stealth delivery by night. On the way home from soccer practice, we crawled the van past each house, stopped long enough for her to toss open the side door, run as fast as she could to the door, drop the bag, ring the doorbell, and jump back into the van, slamming the door shut as we took off.

To our jaded eyes, this is no big deal, but you should  have heard the laughter; should have heard her saying, Now I know why you were so excited, Mom; should have heard her say, I wish we had ten candy bags to drop off.  Turns out that stealth drop-offs and secret door-bell ringing are indeed a daring thrill when you are nine. It’s simple joys like this, the ones that make us laugh, that capture the essence of The Daring Book for Girls.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.