Underoos and Big Dreams
on being the chosen one
What are Underoos? It’s underwear that’s fun to wear, or at least it was in the 80’s. During the day you may wear boring regular clothes, but at night you transform into Wonder Woman! (If you were my little sister). Or Veronica! (If you were me. You know, from the Archie and Veronica comic.)
Recently, while putting together a mini author visit video* for kids, I came across this picture of my sister and me, proudly posing in our Underoos. Why this flagrant attempt to get kids to laugh by showing them a picture of me in my underwear? Because I talk a lot about superheroes and who we look up to in my books. Rodney wants to play trumpet like Dizzy Gillespie, and Noah wants to be powerful like the Hulk.
Who did I want to be like when I was a kid? Despite what my Underoos may indicate, it wasn’t Veronica from the Archie comic. Eight-year-old Meredith had a burning desire to be Annie. More specifically, I wanted to be Aileen Quinn, the nine-year-old actress who was chosen to play Annie in the 1982 movie adaptation.
I watched a documentary that summer and learned that she was chosen over 8,000 other little girls to play the part. In that moment, I knew what I wanted more than anything was for someone to look at a room full of 8,000 kids and choose me, but I couldn’t sing or tap dance. I wanted to be chosen for first chair in band, the best trumpet, and later oboist. In college, I wanted my creative advertising class to look at all the ads we’d pinned to the wall and choose mine as the best. I wanted to win the award at grad school, and I wanted an editor to pick my manuscript out of the piles and piles of manuscripts and say, “yes.”
Everyone has their own stories of wanting to be chosen. It’s one of those common threads that ties us all together as human beings. And so I wrote that desire into my character, Noah Minor, hitting a chord that would resonate with readers.
The thing is, whether you get recognized for it or not, we all have unique superpowers that deserve celebration. And even if we aren’t chosen, there’s something kind of cool about carrying a hidden superpower around, like a pair of Underoos, just waiting for our opportunity to rip off the “ordinary” and lean into our extraordinaries. We don’t have to wait around for someone to choose us. We can just do it. I try to do my part in giving people a chance to shine by posting superpowers on my website. Comment below and tell me yours! We’re stronger together.
Thanks for reading this newsletter, my homage to all things kid and kidlit. If you like my writing, maybe your kids will, too. You can buy The Minor Miracle, The Minor Rescue and Her Own Two Feet wherever you find your favorite books.
*On the “resources” page of my website, you’ll find a link to a free video where I talk about The Minor Miracle and The Minor Rescue and they’ll see that picture of me in my Underoos. You can also book a free 15-minute Q&A zoom call where kids can ask me questions about my books, being a writer or my doodle dog.