Snippets - Four Nancy's
I gotta admit, this one's a little long, but each Nancy deserves her time to shine!
Nancy 1 circa late 1970s:
Nancy Eisenstodt was my mom’s best friend when she was a new mom. Their meet-cute story is a family favorite.
Imagine a woman with a baby alone staring out the picture window of her split-level suburban home, feeling lonely, isolated, bored. Then she sees another young mom pushing a baby in a carriage down the sidewalk. Now, my mom was many things, but she was not a runner. However, as the story goes, she sprinted out of the house and threw herself at the other woman in a breathless introduction. It was unclear if she brought me along or left me in the playpen… (it was circa 1976-ish)
Either way, the women were both thrilled to have found each other. Turns out, Nancy was new to the area and bored and lonely also. They became immediate friends.
Nancy’s son Jesse was about a year younger than me, and we ended up at the same nursery school (that’s what they called it in the late 70s!) a couple years later. He was my friend too and the cause of my intense phobia of dogs that lasted into my adulthood. One day we were walking around the block a little ahead of our parents and paused to pet a neighborhood dog. Jesse was probably about 3 at the time, and maybe he was a little rough with the dog, and suddenly out of nowhere the dog leapt up and bit his face. I remember the moments before-bite – and after-bite – but nothing in between as the trauma of the moment was immediately compressed and buried. I ran crying back toward our shocked parents as blood poured from Jesse’s face.
He turned out fine, just a laceration near his eye, nothing a few stitches couldn’t fix, but from that moment on I was terrified of dogs, including his. This didn’t bode well for me when I had to spend afternoons at his house while my mom was working. I will always love Nancy, but I still don’t know why she locked me in her room so the dog could roam free in the house, but after all, it was the 70s. Jesse, that little shit (his 3 year old self, not the man he is today) taunted me from behind the door, holding his barking dog and threatening to let him in. Not cool, Jesse. But despite this, Nancy was solid. A friend to the end. Literally, as she was one of the few people who didn’t abandon my mom when she got MS two decades later.
In a terrible bout of irony, Jesse was diagnosed with MS when he was in his early thirties. Last I heard he was not doing great. I should reach out to Nancy. I really should. I hold no grudges about the dog situation and have all the love and respect for a woman who never gave up on my mom.
Nancy 2 circa early 1990s:
Freshman year of college I lived in an all-female dorm with a roommate who smoked (lied about it, so fun surprise for me), borrowed my clothes for sorority rush (which I did not bother with), and came home wasted most nights. She wasn’t a total asshole, but she was not a keeper. So, when I met my hallmate Nancy, whose roommates were creepy twins who looked like the ones in The Shining, but in modern clothes, we bonded.
Nancy also smoked but was always trying to quit. Together we’d buy a pack of cigarettes, smoke one, and then throw the pack out in disgust with ourselves, finding solace in our shared love of McDonald’s quarter pounders with cheese. I still remember seeing the now classic movie, Reality Bites, with her and having our minds blown. Afterwards we shared a smoke as we pined hard for Ethan Hawke (Ben who?) and wished we were Winona Ryder or Janeane Garofalo (that was a toss up).
From the neighboring state of West Virginia, Nancy would be the first to roll her eyes at the indignities of other people’s assumptions, hillbilly, hick, etc., but in the same breath tell me stories about shirtless high school boys cruising the streets blasting country music and evangelical girlfriends getting pregnant and having secret abortions. I shared my own tales of the north, which to be honest, were not that dissimilar minus the accent, extreme religion, and preferred music choice.
My Nancy was beautiful, smart, funny, and had great taste in music, introducing me to country and folk singers like John Denver, Johnny Cash, and her favorite, the Indigo Girls, which soon became mine. We also both loved the 1993 Melissa Etheridge album, Yes I Am, our favorite track was, of course, “Come to My Window,” which we’d belt out while walking through campus on late night walks home. Nancy had the better voice, sweet and raspy, and I loved listening to her.
I wish I had stuck it out with Nancy, and our mutual friend Jill, who was the only other girl in our hall not to rush a sorority. The three of us bonded that winter playing endless rounds of rummy with some high school friends of Jill’s who became ours. These girls were solid, good people, and loyal friends. I knew that even at 18. But I had a wandering eye. I met a girl in my Spanish class who was so pretty it hurt to look at her, but also wore Birkenstocks on big clunky feet, which made her approachable. As we got to know each other, I was drawn in by her fizzy electric energy. People gravitated toward her, mostly guys, and I was thrilled to be part of her orbit.
But this meant less time with Nancy and Jill. This meant choosing my new friend to room with sophomore year when her lottery ticket proved better; this meant an inevitable drift that would continue until they went their way and I went mine. We kept in touch, Nancy and I, over the years, and to this day we reach out on occasion via Facebook, but I regret choosing bombastic glitter over subtle and subdued, over tried and true.
I would not learn this lesson for many, many years, until it finally dawned on me that my penchant for these kinds of female friends mirrored my issues with men, sidelining the kind and steady for the sexy and mysterious. But dazzle and drama do not stay the course. They always choose themselves in the end.
Reader, be warned.
Nancy 3, timeless, you know her too – Nancy Drew!
Let’s get fictional. First of all, did you know Carolyn Keene, author of Nancy Drew series is a pseudonym?! How did I go 5 decades not knowing this? Or maybe I did and forgot? Because, old.
Regardless, turns out many people penned the famous series and its spin-offs, but the woman who wrote the first 23 books - Mildred Wirt Benson - was unknown and under appreciated for many years.
Mildred worked for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which churned out juvenile series by hiring ghost writers who waived their rights. They made a killing with more than one famous series, including The Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins. Mildred ended up writing under her own name later, rather prolifically, but after Simon & Schuster bought out the original publisher, she had to fight to reclaim her own story. Here’s a quote from the article linked above, Tale of the Ghost Writer:
Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter and senior partner of the Syndicate, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, had publicly declared herself the sole author of the Nancy Drew series. She told reporters she began penning the series after finding the first three outlines on her late father’s desk. When Harriet was introduced to Grosset & Dunlap’s witness, Mildred Wirt Benson, her surprised response was “I thought you were dead.”
That was in 1980, but it wasn’t until 1991 due to the diligence of Susan Redfern, a journalism school secretary at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who made the connection and fought for Mildred’s nomination into the school’s alumni Hall of Fame. She was inducted in 1991 and in 1993, the year I met MY NANCY, a journalism professor, Carolyn Stewart Dyer, led a committee to organize the first ever Nancy Drew Conference in 1993.
“Mildred Wirt Benson was an honored guest that made national headlines. The original Carolyn Keene was finally unveiled.”
I love this story and wish I had known it sooner, but it’s never too late to solve a mystery, is it, Mildred?
Nancy 4, fictional, circa now but set in the 80s, Nancy fucking Wheeler:
Nancy Wheeler, of Stranger Things, is the most bad ass Nancy on this list, and perhaps to date. What I love most about Nancy, is how far she has traveled – and by that, I mean her character arc. She started out as (outwardly) prim and proper, high achieving, nerdy. Reader, I could relate.
And when the sexy popular Steve Harrington sets his sights on her, as his next conquest, she was powerless to resist – I am not exaggerating. Have you seen that guy’s hair? OK admittedly it’s kinda poofy in Season 1 but tune in later for more impressive locks.
Anyway. Had that been nerdy me, I probably would have done the SAME. Sorry Barb!!
While Nancy is losing her virginity to Steve, her best friend is waiting outside by an empty dirty pool. (Believe me when I say that I was always Barb in my high school circa-shenanigans.) And Poor Barb, she is cold and hurt and unwanted. Certainly, by the popular teens inside the house, partying, but also by her own best friend who has abandoned her.
Now let’s note that Nancy is NOT a bad person, she feels torn, but again STEVE, and so she does what any pretty nerd in her un-right mind does, she closes the blinds and gets on with her business. Unbeknownst to her – SPOILER ALERT TO ANYONE WHO HASN’T WATCHED – the Upside Down swallows up her friend in one terrible terrifying tortured gulp. Bye-bye Barb.
Nancy takes her friend’s disappearance hard. And personally. When Barb’s fate is revealed, Nancy is crushed and forever changed. Not all at once, but in believable increments, over the next four seasons, her character shifts from grief and depression to baseball bat wielding bad assery. First she goes by the books, trying to solve the mystery of Barb, and the mystery of the Upside Down, like a journalist. But as more casualties fall, and the town descends into monstrous chaos, she takes on an edge, visible in her countenance, her walk, and her unabashed ovaries-out bravery.
I think Nancy has had the most transformative growth of all the characters (and I’m not the only one.) Who could have imagined her as a gun toting Demi Gorgon goading hatchet wielding warrior? Yes, she was initially driven by guilt and grief, and that continues to fuel her, but she has channeled her feelings into power.
I really hope she survives season five but if she doesn’t, I imagine she will put up one hell of a fight.
Thank you to all the Nancy’s who participated in this Substack post, real and imagined.
Love these Nancies!!
Really loved how this weaves the loyalty of the first Nancy with the regret about the second one. That line about chosing bombastic glitter over tried and true is such a gut punch, especialy since most of us realize this way too late in life. I went through something similiar in college where the flashier friendships burned bright but left me feeling hollow compared to the steady ones that actualy stuck around.