Kimberly Emerson

In the movie Picture Perfect, Jennifer Aniston’s character has to devise a marketing campaign for a product that ranks second in popular opinion.  She settles on the slogan, “We’re number two – and that’s not bad.”

I think Madison Avenue would hate that line, and for good reason.  America only celebrates Number One.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard how all the truly successful people in life were oldest children or only children – astronauts, presidents, CEOs, the list goes on and on.  One comedian suggested that you tell your oldest child he can be anything, but with your younger child, “It’s time to take him down to Denny’s so he can see what the fry cook does.”

All this got me to thinking.  In the world of writing, very few people hit gold with their first effort.  You hear a lot about someone or other’s brilliant “first novel,” and the chances are that isn’t their first book at all.  It’s the first one that was published, but by the time authors get published, they’ve usually already written at least three full length novels.  The experience of writing the first ones helps you to figure out how to tell a story more clearly.

Even only knowing the books that got published, sometimes I prefer the second one that comes along.  Here are the ones that came to mind.  I’m sure you can add others.

1.  The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

As a kid, I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s books.  My mom ran the library of my elementary school, and she introduced me to this Northern California author.  (I seem to recall that she spoke at our school once, which is why I still remember the original meaning of the word fabulous.)  I adored several of them – The Egypt Game and Black and Blue Magic, particularly.  Once I read the first one, in a habit that has continued through adulthood, I read all the rest of her books that I could get my hands on.  In the litany came The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case, where the Stanley family goes to Italy and finds out why making up rich relations is a bad idea.  In a thrilling discovery, I found that it was the second in a series, and promptly picked out the first one, The Headless Cupid, intending to like it better.  I’m not kidding – even as a kid, I understood the “Number One is better” rule.  Yet for some reason, I found The Headless Cupid kind of a letdown.  Still ZKS, so definitely worth the read, but not what I expected. Maybe the second one was a better story, or perhaps it was just that the plot takes place in Italy and I had a continental soul even in my single digit years.  One way or another, though, The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case would be the one I read over and over.

2.  Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold

A rare sidestep for me into the world of fantasy.  As a rule, I like my fiction more reality-based.  However, I also think it’s a good thing to get out of my box from time to time, so when my friend Deborah enthusiastically recommended the first in the series, The Curse of Chalion, I decided to give it a try.  (I was also fascinated by Deborah’s description of the religion Ms. Bujold creates for the series, featuring a holy family of the Father, the Mother, the Daughter, the Son and the Bastard.  How can you not be intrigued?)  She told me the second book in the series was good, too.  I read The Curse of Chalion and enjoyed it.  I picked up the second one with mixed emotions, wondering if it would hold up to the first.  For this reader, it left the first book behind in the dust within the first hundred pages.  Protagonist Ista rocks.  She’s a minor character in the first book, and not the most sympathetic person, which is probably why it was such a surprise to find out everything that was going on in her head when I got to Paladin.  Like everyone we haven’t taken the time to find out about, Ista has a lot more to offer.  Plumbing the depths of her own spirituality, saving the land and occasionally making out with a stranger on the staircase, Ista is a fabulous surprise a minute.  I’d like to re-read both books, but I might end up skipping the first one to go straight back to Ista’s world.

3.  Faking It, by Jennifer Crusie

Another of Deborah’s recommendations, and completely different from either of the other two I’ve mentioned, this one’s a romance novel, but better.  I read somewhere that Jennifer Crusie writes the thinking woman’s romances.  Her wit makes all her books worth reading, but this one is my favorite.  It’s the second in the adventures of the Dempsey family, and the first one, Welcome to Temptation, does have the more enticing title, I’ll grant you.  Both books are the best kind of romance novels, where the sex scenes add some fun steam, but they also tell you something about the characters and even occasionally further the plot.  (Sometimes the sex is even lousy, just like in real life.)  While I recommend reading Temptation first, I found Faking It the most fun.  You may get a little dizzy from all the actors wandering in and out of the narrative, but you’ll never be bored.  Everyone comes with their own personality and their own agenda, trying to navigate their way through the world of relationships and art galleries.  Some of the characters even come with more than one personality.  Besides, before I read this book, I never knew whether I was an Eve or a Louise, and whether the men I was attracted to were muffins or doughnuts.  That’s life-changing information right there.

There are even a couple of things outside of the written world where I prefer Number Two:

Laverne and Shirley

Moving to television.  A spin-off from Happy Days, these adventures of two quirky singletons were always more engaging to me than the original.  Maybe it’s just that this one was about the girls.  Happy Days had some fun female characters, but it was mostly about the guys.  Laverne and Shirley taught me that friends are more than just emotional stand-ins until the knight in shining armor shows up.  Knights may come and go, but your best friend will still be there. In the end, the producers forgot that, trying to carry on the show with just one of the duo, and the whole thing fell apart.

Dara Torres

Leaving fiction altogether for the world of sports, we come upon my favorite #2.  At the 2008 Olympics, Dara Torres competed against women half her age, and left most of them in her rear view mirror.  An Olympic contender at 41, Dara Torres made it through the qualifying rounds in order to compete in the 50-meter freestyle race.  She picked up the silver medal.  Reporters asked her how she felt, missing the gold by just 1/100th of a second, but this 40-something was too busy cheering in her living room to notice.  Ms. Torres showed the world that women in their forties are not past their prime.  As a matter of fact, we may just be coming into our own.  She only missed qualifying again in 2012 by 9/100 of a second.  I wonder if the 25-year-old who beat her will be able do that well, twenty years down the line.

Despite what our national culture will tell you, sometimes Number Two is truly the superior specimen.  Go be amazing today, no matter what labels anyone else try to put on you.

Yes, in fact, Kimberly is a second child.  Why do you ask?