my childhood hero

I’ve never really had any heroes. No real reason why. It’s not that I don’t admire people or get inspired by them, but there’s never been anyone I wanted to emulate.

Except one.

I can’t remember when I first learned about Jane Goodall. Probably from my dad’s massive stack of National Geographic back issues. I devoured them, plus whatever else I found at the library. I learned to recognize her chimps by name and appearance better than my classmates. I knew her story: archaeologist Louis Leakey suggested she study chimpanzees even though she didn’t have a degree because she was a good observer. So she went to Tanzania, sat, and watched.

And being a shy kid, I was good at watching and waiting. Sitting alone and watching animals sounded like the best job ever (mind, I’d not thought through the whole lack of indoor plumbing and mosquitoes thing, but even so).

She spoke at a college when I was about 12. A friend of my mother’s was a dean and managed to get us tickets. This still looms huge in my mind because she entered not from backstage but down the aisle and passed 5 feet away from me and it was the most exciting thing ever!

I may not have fulfilled my second-grade dream of setting up camp on the shores of Loch Ness and finding the monster once and for all (mad respect to those who did), but I still find much to admire about Jane Goodall. She’s polite but direct – she doesn’t sugar coat facts for people, which is still something I struggle with. Fashion nrrd that I am I still gotta respect that she’s worn the same ponytail for over 50 years because dammit, she’s got better things to worry about than the latest hairstyle! She has a sense of humor. She allows for the possibility of Bigfoot.

But most of all, she didn’t let her world be small. The Tanzanian authorities didn’t want a young single woman traveling alone in their country so she brought her mom. She did her study despite the fact that she didn’t have a PhD (though she went on to get one). This was huge to me as a teenager, because at that age I was learning that seemingly innocuous things (traveling alone, being taken seriously by teachers/mentors) are still much harder for women than men.

Years later when I actually met her (!) at a book signing, I’m afraid I fangirled shamelessly. Gushing about what an inspiration, I saw you when I was 12, and thinking OMG she’s so tiny! So kind! So cool-headed in the face of my silliness!

We just got the National Geographic channel as part of Disney+ and I stumbled across this new documentary on it, so I imagine you’ll hear I’ll be squeeing once again, and trying to remember all those chimpanzees’ names!