the classics

I was never a book reader. Back in high school I never read anything besides People magazine, and maybe Readers Digest that my dad gave me a subscription to as a Christmas present. (Thanks, Dad.)
I never expressed one iota of interest in Readers Digest either.

On top of that, having no discipline, I was awful at doing book reports. In prep school we had six weeks to do them from the time they were assigned to us.
So in 9th grade, Russian Roulette-style, I ended up with To Kill A Mockingbird.
Right off the bat I judged it by the title and immediately took a disliking to it. Part of the fact I was 'forced' to read it also made me not want to read it. You know how that is?
I looked at most Kurt Vonnegut books that way too. Everyone around me always had a dog-eared copy of some Vonnegut book for one reason or another. And me with my anti-establishment mentality, in a way I saw my classmates as mindless sheep being programmed by society by all reading the same narrow list of authors, the same books.
So just the fact of being assigned to me, To Kill A Mockingbird became the 'programmed' reading I was trying to avoid. Yeah I was so smart, I could see through their evil subliminal plan of trying to teach me some lesson that I already thought I knew.
And yet like an albatross it still somehow hung over my shoulder.

Six weeks came and went, and I never did that book report. I never even opened the book. My teacher threatened me with failure of English class if I didn't hand it in, so I said I was working on it to placate her. But I never did. I graduated without doing it, so I felt absolved.

But in the back of my mind, every so often I would think about that book.

It's funny because when I was that young my mind still wasn't emotionally developed at all. I took everything at face value for years and I couldn't see anyone's ulterior motives or read body language or read between the lines. I wouldn't have understood that book if I had read it anyway.

It took me years to realize it was mostly because I was such a loner and my parents were never around to raise me or teach me the subtleties of people's words or actions. My mom never taught me anything about people, she kinda stayed back and let me develop my own opinions. It's good in one sense because your mind doesn't get poisoned with prejudice, but at the same time it's like being thrown in the ocean with just a rowboat and a pair of oars, not knowing how to fish or how to navigate. That was my level of social skills.

I remember once in my early 20s when I was hanging out with my close friend Lisa, I met a girl that I took a liking to and was talking to for a while, and after we parted ways and I felt pretty good about myself and my chances with her, Lisa turned and said to me,
"She doesn't like you."
"What do you mean?" I just couldn't understand it. I thought I totally hit it off with this girl. I considered in my 20 year old mind that maybe Lisa was jealous, but then we never had that kind of relationship.
"She just doesn't like you, couldn't you tell?"
"Really?" I said, slightly crestfallen at this point. Again, I didn't see it.
Lisa started to explain to me all the signals this girl was putting out that I was totally not picking up on. At all.
It was also at that moment Lisa became the Mystical Decoder Of All Things I Didn't Understand.
Only later in life does one completely comprehend the weight and gravity of such a person in one's life.
Consider yourself truly blessed if you ever have a friend willing to be patient enough to teach you stuff you have no clue about, in a way that isn't condescending and insulting to your (perceived) intelligence. My infantile mind until that point just could not see the nuances of things.
She taught me to read between the lines.

So anyway, fast forward to the present, over 30 years later. Consider that for the past 16 years I have been umbilically tethered to the internet. I have a shelf of books I never touch. Some Vonnegut too. "One day I'll read them," I halfheartedly promise to myself when I'm cleaning and forced to confront whether to keep them or donate them to the local Salvation Army.
Usually, while I'm surfing the internet, Leslie reads voraciously next to me. Harry Potter series. Vampires. Some fluffy stuff sometimes. But always reading. I tell her she should do book reviews because of her unbiased and razor-sharp critiques.

But then one day it hits her to read The Classics, meaning basically, 'all that stuff from school.'
And the stigma that hung over me about that time, and those books and what they represented has faded and replaced with a genuine curiosity.

Yeah, OK, I honestly feel like an idiot writing it like that, I can see how you're reading it, like with an, "Are you kidding, what took you so long?" Like I never knew what velvet or silk felt like.

But yeah. It's a great book. I admit it. I missed out, OK?
Watching the movie always helps me visualize things too.
It was also completely fascinating when Leslie found out and told me Dill was Truman Capote.
That just adds a whole 'nother layer of interesting. Need to download Breakfast At Tiffanys and In Cold Blood, and of course read those too.
In the movie, they downplayed him but in the book you can tell she's really fond of Dill, waiting the entire year for him to come back. I did think it was really cute and affectionate in the movie when there's a shot of Dill passed out leaning on the Reverend as everyone else was riveted to the trial.
I also loved reading about how everyone who made the movie stayed close for the rest of their lives. Gregory Peck was very close with the girl who played Scout, as well as the actor who played the accused man Tom Robinson, Brock Peters.

Anyway, there's something more valuable to me in 'borrowed' books. I appreciate them more knowing I have to give them back at some point. (god, why is my head so fucked up sometimes?)
But it's really fun to share the experiences with Leslie. Kinda like biking together.

Next up is Catch-22. I think we're gonna need the movie first.