Blubber

I actually wrote to Judy Blume years ago and asked her if I could

do the movie version of Blubber, my all time favorite of her books for teens. There were two scenes that really got me excited, one with a kid in class picking his nose and saving his boogers on little scraps of paper, and another one where the young heroine has to rake up all these leaves for bad behavior and is forced to pee out in the woods because she isn't near a bathroom. As a kid, reading about other  kids picking their noses and peeing in the great outdoors was irresistible, especially in a book you could get right next to Moby Dick and A Seperate Peace. Judy legitimized bad behavior in her award winning books -- I didn't have to feel so bad when I acted up . The antics seem innocent now and by today's standards a kid would have to pick another kid's nose and eat it in front of the student body for anyone to notice. 

     To my surprise, Judy answered me in a brief and nice email thanking me for my support and was really sorry to inform me that her grown son Larry was going to make the movie. I can't tell you how bad I wanted to switch places with Larry. I had no idea what he looked like or what his life was like but being squeezed through Judy's gateway to the earth was enough.  As far as I can tell the movie never got made, that happens, even Judy Blume, with her huge audience of new and aging fans probably has a hard time selling her ideas --she's probably got to add some vampires and more heavy petting to her fun morality plays to get them made today.

  I searched my internal Judy and lucky for me, she answered ---Judy was always there, when I need her.  "Listen, honey, Lawrance Blume is my son, so he gets all the breaks, that's just life. You'll understand when you have children. Anyway, we're working on something right now for Disney, maybe Deenie, so just wait darling and you can add Deenie to you DVD or Blue Ray collection, anyway I got to go, my rather fulfilling life is calling."