Some Good Advice

“Dear Abby, My dad is overseas in the military and my mom seems like she’s under a lot of stress and is taking it out on me.”

Dear Abby wrote a book for teens in 1960. Image via cc on Flickr.

Pauline Phillips passed away this week.  For decades she doled out advice and quips to dedicated readers everywhere in her syndicated Dear Abby column.  I was a loyal reader, especially in my teen years when everything seemed so topsy-turvy and as a shy person, I was loathe to ask advice of anyone who actually knew me.  Reading her column, I imagined myself in her readers’ shoes, wondered what the rest of their lives were like, pondered just what brought them to put pen to paper and write to a newspaper columnist – not a stranger, just a friend who hadn’t met them yet.

I branched out.  I read Ann Landers (Abby’s twin sister), Dear Boy (in Sassy), and the random advice columns in everything from my grandma’s Parade to my friend’s Seventeen to my mom’s Redbook.  I pretended to dislike listening to Car Talk when driving cross country with the family, but really, their advice was nurturing just like the others.  Later I discovered Dan Savage, Ask Alice, and Amy Dickinson who confronted issues I’d never imagined but couldn’t get enough of, as well as answering questions that I could’ve written myself.  If I’m stuck in a waiting room, I’ve been known to read “Ask a Pilot” in AOPA Pilot,  or anything else I can get my hands on, whether the advice is on cooking utensils, diaper creams, dovetail joints, or tax preparation.  I’m an advice junkie.

“Dear Abby, I’m thirteen but I’ve already ruined my life.”

“Dear Abby, I was sexually abused.”

“Dear Abby, I can’t stop blushing.”

Dear Abby answered letters from teens with as much respect, understanding, and wit as those from adult writers, and in doing so, showed not just her teen letter writers, but all of her readers, regardless of age, that teens were worthy of a kind ear.  Dear Abby valued the experience of the teens.  She showed her readers that their stories are important, that it is possible to take yourself too seriously, that everyone deserves to be heard.  The example she set is one teen librarians can learn much from in our approach to our patrons:  

Advice columns and teens go together like peanut butter and jelly.  In honor of the life of Pauline Phillips, the legacy of her daughter Jeanne Phillips who writes Dear Abby now, and all of the other advice columnists who have made a difference in our lives and in the lives of our teens, here are some novels featuring advice givers.

A note: the questions quoted above are all pulled from actual questions answered in the Dear Abby column over the years.
-Heather