Every Sunday morning when I was growing up Daddy would drive me down to the bus station where he would pick up the newspaper and I would be allowed to choose a comic book. Well, not choose exactly since most comics were out of bounds. That was mostly no big deal because I didn’t want classic comics—I was reading the originals anyway– and I didn’t really like superheros like Superman or Batman or The Green Hornet either. And I could pass up the westerns because I got to see Roy Rogers on television. But I did, as I was choosing between Disney and Looney Tunes every Sunday, heave a little sigh in the direction of Sheena Queen of the Jungle. It’s not that I didn’t like the more innocent comics in spite of their lacking what I really wanted– that frisson of what my mother would have seen as bad taste. I did like them. And the Disneys in particular had an advantage I didn’t realize until half a lifetime later when my son, who used to curl up with the childhood comics we kept in a big green footlocker, kept coming up with big words which when we asked him where he’d heard them, he said he’d read in a comic. No linguistic dumbing down in those days.

But it’s not Disney or Looney Tunes that have stuck with me all these years. It’s – Mother be damned—Sheena. Of course on principle I tended to want anything my parents told me was out of bounds, but in this case I didn’t just WANT Sheena. I had to have her. And I got her too, because every week I’d trade my Disneys to my friend John Goddard for the Sheenas he’d been saving for me. I’d read them right away, someplace I couldn’t be seen, like in the attic or out on the roof, then stick them under my mattress. I’d heard about saving money under mattresses so that seemed like a good place at the time. And it must have been, because as far as I knew Mother never found them.

The reason I was so stuck on Sheena was that she was an independent operator, not like Jane whom I envisioned hanging around the trees peeling Tarzan’s grapes or waiting to see what he wanted for dinner. And of course when Sheena got into trouble, she didn’t wait for any Tarzan, she saved her own self. Perfect.

I also liked the way she looked. She was blonde, something I’d always wanted to be, and she had a whole wardrobe of skimpy little leopard skins and a figure that struck me as wildly exotic. And not only that, she wore an anklet—at a time when tattooed women were from circuses and when no one but sluts wore anklets.

Now, the house I grew up in was on a hill and where our land dropped off there were some trees with conveniently accessible branches I used to straddle-shinny out on. When I got towards the end, I’d drop down and swing to the next tree, my feet dangling over the abyss, all the while emitting what I thought of as the female version of the howl Tarzan used to let loose while he pounded his chest. Eeeeeyaeeeyaeeeya! Even now, every time I pass a tree I can’t resist checking it for possible ways up. And sometimes when I climb one, the years fall away and I’m nine again and platinum blonde. So if you happen to be passing through a jungle and hear an unexplained roar, look up. It will be my braceleted ankle you’ll see, vanishing into the leaves.