The Outsiders

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. Almost exactly a year which is wild. 2022 was an extremely rough year for me. I’m hoping 2023 will be better; I’m trying to put it into the universe that 2023 will definitely be better.

I wish I was more consistent with writing on this site but I’m still trying to find my voice and trying to decide exactly what it is I want to say. I’ve joined a 52 week writing course to help me with this. Of course, sometimes I’ll do three or four of the prompts in one day and then not do any for three weeks but it doesn’t matter because I’m writing.

In this week’s prompt, it spoke about possessions. Prized possessions from different points in my life. Then the very last part of the prompt asked for a short essay from the point of view of a special object. The first thing I thought of was my twenty-year-old copy of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I thought this was a pretty neat thing to do and it’s the first piece of writing I’ve done in a while that I wanted to share. Even if it’s only with the few people who subscribe to my site. Here it is. A (VERY) short essay from the point of you of my favorite book that I bought when I was 13.

Being picked from the bookstore is the best day of my life. Sure, it’s a short, kinda chubby, nerdy girl who grabs me and brings me home but that’s better than sitting on the shelf in the store forever. She picks me because her 8th grade English teacher said she had to, no offense taken, that’s how a lot of us books are picked. I hear from other people in the house that my new owner is named Veronica.

Veronica reads me so fast. She can’t put me down. Absorbing the plot, the characters, and enamored by the fact that the story begins and ends with the exact same sentence. She can’t believe it. She didn’t realize you could do that with writing. When she finishes with me, she puts me on a shelf then rents the movie version of me. Thus begins her obsession.

She watches the movie countless times, she reads me at least once a year, my pages getting weak and a little yellow but it’s worth it to see the look on her face. To bring her comfort on those nights when she comes home crying. Or where she stays home because she has nowhere else to go. Loneliness clings to her over the years. A sadness that always seems to ease when she picks me up or when she puts in our movie. A sadness that comes and goes in waves. This room where she keeps me is her my favorite place. The place she spends most of her time and I watch her as she brings her friend Kait over every Thursday to watch Supernatural. I watch as she puts up a black and white poster of the cast of The Outsiders. I watch as all the posters change over the years but not ours. Ours always stays right above the TV, right where she can see it from every angle of the room.

I’m there for her when she needs me the most. When it feels like she’s completely alone in the world, she picks me up and reads me again and again. We eventually moved from her favorite room to a place of her own. She puts me on the top shelf of the bookcase, the shelf where she keeps her favorite novels. She never loans me out to anyone, never wanting them to ruin me. Only her hands can hold me, only her fingers can flip my pages, only her eyes get to read my words a thousand times.

We moved from one apartment to another, and then to her first home. Every time she packs me with care, then I’m one of the first things she unpacks, and I’m always on the top shelf of the bookcase. She goes longer now without reading me, it hurts in a way, but honestly, I’m happy about it. It means she doesn’t need me as much. It means she has a fuller life now. She’s not sitting in the loneliness of her room with only me as her comfort.

It means, she’s no longer an outsider.

My Goodbye to Harper Lee

                We now have to live in a world without Harper Lee. I’m not okay with it. Her words were so poignant, their impact so grand which is in such deep contrast to the small elderly woman with the wide smile we see in all the photographs being posted of her.

                I first read To Kill A Mockingbird (TKAM) in the 8th grade. I was 13 and it was the year I found TKAM and The Outsiders. My two greatest loves in this world. Before then, I always dabbled with the idea of writing but after reading those books, the notion of being a writer was solidified in my mind. I wanted to do what Harper Lee did. I wanted to make a difference. I still do.

                “You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ‘em get your goat. Try fightin’ with your head for a change.” These words were spoken to tomboy Scout. One of the first literary characters I ever saw myself in. My whole life, I’ve been gearing up for a fight. Always defensive. The quote above makes me stop and think. Think about whether or not I want to be in a fight. Whether or not someone is even starting a fight with me or if I’m being too sensitive. It’s usually the latter.

                I have yet to find another literary father figure I love and admire more than Atticus Finch. Despite, a lot of people’s opinions on Go Set A Watchman (GSAW), I loved it. People seemed upset about the way Atticus is portrayed in a different light. But the truth is, in TKAM, we all saw Atticus through the eyes of a little girl. We saw her father, her hero, the conscious of Maycomb County.

                In GSAW, Harper Lee makes us grow up. She forces us to see our parents for who they really are, the good and the bad. I didn’t feel betrayed by this portrayal. In fact, I felt as if Scout had come full circle. She loved her father, she admired her father, she hated her father, she forgave her father. We all have to do it and I, for one, was glad to have my friend Scout back to help me through it.

                I have loved a lot of books in my life. But TKAM has stuck with me through it all. It’s been there for me during periods of my adolescence and adulthood.

                It’s there when I need a friend. It’s there when I need to feel the sweltering heat of Maycomb instead of the cold winds of Philadelphia. It’s there when I need to feel like a child again. Or when I need Boo to look out for me.

                Harper Lee is gone but she accomplished what this writer wants to accomplish. She left us her characters. I still have the ability to go home tonight, pick up one of the three copies of TKAM that I own, and dive back into that world. To run around with Jem, Scout and Dill. To stand up in the balcony of the court house because my literary father is passing.

                I will never forget her or her words or the impact she’s had on my life. I’ll leave all of you writers with this Harper Lee quote.

                “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”

                Stand up writers, Harper Lee is passing.