The Privilege is Mine

"There is A Light that Never Goes Out," The Smiths

"I hate reading," my defiant, angry, lost, confused, lonely students said.

"I just don't get into books."

"There are so many other things I could be doing."

"Reading is just....lame."

So many arguments, stemming from a similar place. So many furrowed brows, crossed arms, made-up minds. Kids who believed English wasn't for them, and this would be another class to sit through. Another place to wait for the bell to ring; to tick away minutes. A place to warm a seat and stare ahead, quietly sliding under the radar and letting another worthless high school day idle by.

Sometimes Gatsby was enough to pull them out of the fog. A verity of silly, over-dramatized voices. A soap-opera-saga in print; a high school fairytale gone wrong. The bleak outcome of an otherwise perfect leader; the perfect irony of perfection that never quite was. Other times, Catcher pulled them from the dark abyss, and Holden became the hero to grasp at, learn from, emulate. His intellect captivating; his drawn lies compelling enough to listen to. Still other times, Poe's edge and craze and madness was enough to relate; to breathe and soak in. A heavy load to carry, but not alone. Poe gets it, they'd reason. His life sucked.  Been there, dude.

But sometimes, none of that could do it. Classics may they be, the characters were a little outdated...unrelatable...stale. How can I see Daisy as a rebel, they said, when she hasn't even done anything really that bad? You think Holden would be my friend, they'd argue, when he doesn't even swear?

And I'd get it. Perhaps not entirely, but still. Abuse, drugs, pregnancy, loss, divorce, death, alienation, suicide, depression...all very real hurdles in the painful lives of some of my teens. And as much as I loved (love!) Jay Gatsby's tragic demise and Sam Hamilton's award-winning speeches, it wasn't enough for those kids. Because some kids needed a grittier hero. A character to look up to whose life was shaken and scarred; imperfect and mangled. A protagonist who didn't always quite fit that title; whose words and actions and motives were sometimes off or wrong or ill-intentioned. A character who didn't hit the home run or ace the SATs or become student council representative...but who was okay anyway. A character who made it, barely, and came out on the other side with enough voice and reason to be alive.

For those special kids, I recommended The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Because sometimes artistic cinema gets it right, the novel was released as a film recently, and I had the chance to see it last night. The novel's author, Stephen Chbosky, also wrote the screenplay and adapted the film, which is most certainly the reason the movie version plays as well as it does. I haven't read the the novel in over five years, yet last night's film brought every sentence back into my mind like whiplash, plummeting the perfectly placed teenage anguish and despair back into the forefront of my brain. As devastatingly genuine as much of the film's content is, I couldn't help but think back to the number of students who had claimed they'd been "saved," in one way or another, by Chbosky's tale.

"You shouldn't let the kids read that," one particular colleague said.

"It's pretty graphic," said another.

"Raw."

"Inappropriate. Entirely."

But my team-teacher and I did. With parent permission after a detailed account of the book's contents, of course, but still. Because in all honesty, the content in the novel, in many cases, didn't hold a finger to the life events encompassing my students who needed the book the most. And (some) inappropriate content aside, it's hard to tell a kid to stop reading.

And I'll never regret it. This week alone, I've received almost a dozen emails from former students, claiming the long-lasting effect of the novel have re-washed over them since the release of the movie.

"It was my favorite book, ever," she wrote.

"I'm so thankful you gave me a copy."

"I've read it four times since my junior year, and every time something new is there."

"That book saved my life."

                                  *                *                *                *                *                *

It is one of my deepest hopes that books continue to have a profound effect on me until my deathbed. I hope I will forever find titles that challenge my views and force me to see things in a different way. To remind me that I'm not alone; to convince me the world is a bigger place than I sometimes feel it is. But in this moment, I hope that Charlie and his friends continue to change and help and save the lives of teenagers all the time; every day.

"Sometimes, I look outside, and I think that a lot of other people have seen this snow before. Just like I think that a lot of other people have read those books before. And listened to those songs. I wonder how they feel tonight." 

"I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why."

"So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them." 

"We were just there together. And that was enough."

Love Always, Charlie