Confession

With all the previews for Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day movie that are out right now, I feel the need to come clear regarding my feelings towards that book.

Not a fan.

But before you judge me for my dislike of a classic piece of children’s literature which, I admit, is pretty awesome despite my dislike of it, please allow me to explain.

I was a wildly sensitive little kid with a rather extreme tendency for anthropomorphizing anything and everything. [For “was” read “am.” For "little kid" read...yeah. And it’s not just that my car has a name—that’s normal. Lots of cars do. I mean that our vegetable peeler has a name; our lawnmower has a name AND backstory…] Anyway, as a wildly sensitive little kid with a rather extreme tendency for anthropomorphizing anything and everything, I remember vividly the day when Mrs. Amy McDavid read that book to my kindergarten class in 1984, because two things stood out to me:

1) She pronounced the word “pajamas” as “pah-JAH-mahs” with the middle syllable akin to the vowel in “cot” whereas my Yankee parents pronounced the middle syllable akin to “cat”; and
2) Alexander says, “I HATE my railroad train pajamas.”

While the first point is just one example of the many linguistic conundrums that would be a hallmark of my childhood years following my family’s move from Minnesota to a small town in Virginia, it’s the second point that was my problem with Judith Viorst’s timeless tome exploring pre-pubescent angst.

You see, I was hurt—nay, DEVASTATED that Alexander not only harbored such animosity towards said pajamas but then went on to speak it aloud. What if the person who bought them for him heard him? What if they read the book? What if their feelings were terribly hurt?

...and what about the pajama's feelings?!?!?

What if the railroad train pajamas found out about Alexander’s public trashing of their very essence of being? How absolutely worthless would they feel about themselves? They're pajamas for crying out loud--it's not like they had the agency to pick themselves up and walk to the house of a little boy who would love them!

Okay, so my 5-year-old brain probably did not use the phrases “harbored animosity” or “essence of being” or "agency" but the emotions invoked were very, very real. I did have enough of a sense to realize that the devastating distress that book caused for me might seem irrational to other people if I tried to explain it, but I couldn’t NOT tear up when I thought about that page. And so…

…I never read the book again. I still haven’t. I know the essence of it. I am culturally literate with regards to its content and message and have been known to tack “even in Australia” to the ends of sentences. But I have never again revisited Alexander in his misery. Now that the commercials for the movie are everywhere, however, I felt compelled to make this confession.

And now that that is off my chest, I can return to my work as a rational adult…at my desk named “Sylvia.”