My Life as a Pre-Teen Spy
If you've ever wanted to see my embarrassing childhood scrawlings BOY is this the email for you
Recently, my childhood best friend Katy sent me a really fun message. We’d grown up living across the street from each other, and whatever obsessions we had, we shared, from Nickelodeon’s Moon Shoes to the Men in Black to watching TGIF together every week, and this message brought me back to one of our greatest shared loves: Harriet the Spy. Cleaning her house, Katy had found her old spy notebook, and she sent me gleeful photos of the cover, with the obligatory “Private, Keep Out!” scrawled across the front, and an entry about how annoying her sister was (but also about how she was also pretty okay, in the end).
So of course, I had to dig out my own old spy notebook as well.
Harriet the Spy is the story of Harriet M. Welsch, an eleven-year-old living in New York City who dreams of becoming a writer, and thus for now is a spy, carrying with her at all times a notebook where she records her innermost thoughts on everything she sees and everyone she meets. I was originally introduced to the 1996 Nickelodeon movie adaptation of Harriet, but as I’ve always been a reader first-and-foremost, I spent far more of my childhood with the original 1964 novel by Louise Fitzhugh (I’m going to talk more in depth about both versions later in this piece, but for now it’s worth mentioning that Fitzhugh herself is a fascinating and perhaps even tragic figure worth investigating, though as always, Wikipedia is only a jumping-off point).
For a kid’s story, Harriet the Spy is surprisingly sophisticated, though much of its depth either flew over my head or only affected me subconsciously at the time. I can’t speak for Katy, but what originally drew me to the story was the simple fact that a kid my age was a spy. Though it ends up being a rather small aspect of the story, Harriet has a regular “spy route,” a list of people around the city she spies on every day to record their every move. I was a nosy little kid who listened into all my father’s phone calls and loved to have a secret people wanted to hear; of course the kid who wanted to know everything and did anything she could to find answers was my role model.
So Katy and I attempted to start our own spy route. The suburbs, though, are very different from New York City, and our spy route mostly consisted of us ambling around the cul-de-sac, meekly attempting to peer into people’s windows without drawing attention to ourselves. It only lasted a day or two, until I very casually mentioned to my mom how hard it was to be a spy when nobody leaves their blinds open on our street. I never saw my mom move as fast in her life as she did to put an end to that bad little habit of mine.
The rest of my brief time as a pre-teen spy was just as unsuccessful. I carried my spy notebook with me for a while, but it’s a lot easier to get away with that kind of eccentricity when you’re a fictional character. In Harriet the Spy her friends eventually end up finding her notebook, reading it, and turning on her; likewise, at one point I got a bit too smug about the fact that I was filling this thing with secret thoughts, and a few of my friends grabbed it and read it. They never turned on me or even brought it up again afterwards — I think they just wanted to shut me up for a few minutes — and I didn’t hold a grudge, but it definitely brought my fledgling spy career to an abrupt end. My lips are far too loose to be a spy.
(It took a few more instances of people reading my various journals and diaries before I finally gave up on the concept altogether, though. In that light, the fact that I now broadcast almost all my thoughts on some form or another of social media is a small victory, I suppose — for me, at least, if not for all of you.)
Those two memories were always rather fresh in my mind, but cracking open my childhood spy notebook brought a whole new set of memories flooding back. Despite being a “spy,” Harriet’s notebook mostly ended up being her diary, a way to work through her confusing and tumultuous thoughts, and I can see myself attempting to do the same; there’s an early entry in my notebook talking about my grandfather’s death where it’s pretty clear I’m going through something and just don’t know how to process it.
That entry is an outlier, though. Harriet’s an interesting character in the sense that her emotions are as rich and complicated as any other child’s her age — children are not as simple as we like to think — but she has a self-awareness children lack. It allows young readers to learn about themselves through the character, but it’s certainly a trait lacking in my own journal writing. If Harriet’s notes are insights into her mind, most of mine are just a long list of things that happened to me. Fortunately, I eat that kind of stuff up, and it’s been a joy to look through this old notebook and remember so many meaningless details of my life that are valuable simply because they’d otherwise be lost to time; there’s also a bit where I insult Clueless the television show despite knowing for a fact I’ve never seen a single episode, because I’ve always had unreasonably strong feeling about pop culture, and boy is that reassuring.
I like these two pages because I think they fully sum up who I was as a person at that age. There’s my overly ambitious attempts to design big new characters and create a television show based off games I played with my toys (this is to children what starting a webcomic about your friends is to your twenties or what starting a podcast is to your thirties). There’s a map. There’s a long list of details without any idea what I’m feeling about them because at this point in my life facts are important and emotions are the enemy. There’s me writing in a code I got out of a book from the Scholastic Book Fair, but then translating it on the same page because I wanted to show off, defeating the purpose. There’s a random Batman logo. This is so Spencer it hurts.
My handwriting was also far better at age 9 than it is now as an adult.
This entry also hit me funny because it’s literally just me, barely two weeks into school, ranking every kid in my class in the most tame brutally honest way ever, like a milquetoast pre-teen Regina George. I literally only remember four of these kids. I have no idea what this Jason person did that’s so bad. I like this version of Spencer so much more than I thought I would.
Anyway, I’m mortified now. Thanks for being a part of that.
WAIT, WE’RE NOT GOING TO TALK MORE ABOUT HARRIET THE SPY?
Oh, we’re absolutely going to talk more about Harriet the Spy.
Katy’s message wasn’t the first time I’d thought about Harriet recently. Last fall, while spending a few weeks at home recovering from shoulder surgery, I ran across the movie playing on Starz (a channel I didn’t even know I got) and watched the last 2/3rds of it. By this point the story was so familiar that it rushed back to me pretty quickly, but what really struck me watching the movie was the nostalgia, not just for Harriet, but for that entire era of children’s television — for Nickelodeon in the 90s, with all the slime, dance montages, and denim that entailed. Those qualities that make it a comforting, familiar watch for an adult child of the 90s are the same qualities that make it rather squarely a children’s movie.
I don’t think you can necessarily say the same about the book, and not just because children’s books in the 60s were at the same reading level as much young adult fiction is today (not an insult to YA, which I love dearly). I gave my own beloved, beat-up, movie-edition of the book a reread after finding my childhood spy notebook and was surprised by how much of it still worked (but also what didn’t).
When first released, Harriet the Spy was notable for having a rather flawed, often unlikable protagonist. Harriet’s a very real child in that sense, loud and stubborn and often rude (but also curious, insightful, and always learning and growing). Maybe we take that for granted today, but at the time it was pretty revolutionary, and I feel like a lot of children can see themselves in Harriet — and perhaps even some adults can remember what it was like to be that young and confused.
But there’s also a surprising amount of adult content in the book — not adult as in sexual, but an adult sensibility that would go right over children’s heads. While the omniscient narration sticks pretty closely to Harriet’s perspective, it occasionally throws a few jabs at Harriet’s lack of understanding, jokes that would only be funny to adults. There’s an entirely separate plot running in the background of this book starring Harriet’s parents as they learn how to actually parent their child after a decade of letting other people do it for them. It’s a plot that’s almost solely subtext, invisible to a child but perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book to an adult. Harriet’s parents are also surprisingly well-drawn characters for a children’s book, especially her father, who cracked me up a good 75% of the time he spoke.
Classism and money is also a recurring, if minor, theme that pops up a few times, unexpected and refreshing in pretty much any medium, but especially a children’s book.
The book also has the advantage of being a period piece, albeit an unintentional one — it was contemporary when written, but now feels like a time capsule to a very different place at a very different time. 1960s NYC is an interesting place to visit (via book) even as an adult, but reading this book as a child it had an almost magical allure. I didn’t know how Harriet could just wander around unsupervised, how her attic bedroom could have its own bathroom, or what in the world an Egg Cream was, but that mystery just made Harriet’s world all the more fascinating then, and still adds an extra flair to it now.
Another friend of mine recently read Harriet the Spy to her child, and referred to it as “problematic.” This is true, and while I generally still prefer the book, the movie does improve on all these elements — first of all, by adding characters of color to the book’s all-white cast.
While I mentioned that Harriet is sometimes harsh or rude, there are a few moments where the book feels downright mean-spirited. In the very first chapter Ole Golly takes Harriet and Sport to visit her mother, a “simple” woman who leads a meaningless life never leaving her home. Harriet, the omniscient narrator, the illustrations, and even Golly herself all take pot-shots at Golly’s mother and especially her weight that are completely out of line, and unnecessary to teach the lesson Golly wants to. The movie replaces this encounter completely with a visit to a different eccentric friend of Golly’s, one who teaches a similar lesson in a more positive manner.
The book’s ending also just doesn’t quite land as well as it should. Harriet learns the lesson that saves her friendships, but not the lesson that saves her writing — her newspaper articles are the same mean gossip, including people’s full names, that got her into trouble in the first place, and revisiting it as an adult, it stretched belief that the school administrators would let it go to print. The movie not only allows Harriet to have a more proactive role in gaining her newspaper position, but lets her apply the lesson Golly taught her about her writing, turning her notes into stories people want to read, not just transplanting them wholesale from her notebook to the newspaper.
In that sense, maybe the two versions work best in concert. For all its flaws, I still think Harriet the Spy is a classic, and much of that does come down to the fact that it preaches — subtly, but clearly — some pretty important lessons.
This kind of empathy and perspective is something people young and old need to keep in mind more now than ever. Thinking you know all the answers to life is the most dangerous thing there is.
Harriet the Spy’s other major lesson, again, comes down to her occasional nasty streak. The book never condemns Harriet for having these thoughts. The moral isn’t that she’s bad for having them — it’s that these thoughts are hurtful to others and should be kept to herself, and if others do find out about them, then it’s okay to lie in order to spare their feelings. Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t just feel right, it feels revolutionary.
I was absolutely floored when I rediscovered this passage as an adult. Any kid who was different — and I was certainly different — has to learn how to lie in order to survive. Harriet the Spy doesn’t condemn this, as so many influences in my life did. Instead, it accepts the sad fact, but reminds us to always be honest with ourselves. Someday you’ll be able to tell the truth.
I don’t think I explicitly picked up on this lesson as a kid, but I absolutely think it unknowingly lodged myself in my brain and helped me through some tough times. If you’ll allow me to be melodramatic for a moment, it might have even helped save my life. So, thank you for that, Harriet the Spy. I’ll always appreciate it.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!