No one is following me on this yet and I am truly happy that I don't have to edit myself or think twice about what I have to say because I am very sick of having to watch my words so my crazy ass family doesn't try to do something ridiculous like try to get me kicked out of kinship just because I think more liberally than they do. But what I really want to just make note of is books. My favorite is Perks of Being a Wallflower, angsty and extremely true. When I first read it I was in my 12th grade book club, for cool kids because nerds rule the world, and there was a red head in the class that said a total of oh 4 things and they were answers to questions and that was it. We went over what it was like to be a wallflower, but no one in the club had any experience on being a total and complete outcast before. This school was an alternative high school so all of us were "outcasts" but we all had each other, most of the kids, like me, were pregnant or listened to heavy music and had realllllly bad A.D.H.D. But none of us raised our hands, except for Jesse, the super quiet red head. He said that he had never had any friends and that his brother relentlessly beat the shit out of him. All of us were in shock, this kid who sat alone and read all day just spoke for 10 minutes. The teacher just thanked him for sharing while we all just stared blankly at him. I am always the one to cheer for the under dog and I decided that there was more to this kid than anyone wanted to see. So I sat next to him at lunch that day and we talked. He told me that he was exactly like charlie, the main antagonist in Perks, before Charlie started making friends. Jesse told me about how he lived in the old folks home in Orem, UT because his parents owned the place and how his only friends were books and 70 year old geezers. He also mentioned the only time he had ever been high was when his brother would smoke weed into the vent in his old house so that he wouldn't get caught. Lucky enough for Jesse, his brother's smoke would blow into his room and jesse would get allergic reactions to the weed and would get very very sick.
Jesse and I became really good friends over time and we made more weird friends and ate lunch together and etc. When we finally finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower, most of the club just shrugged it off and said yeah it was a good book. But I got something way more rewarding, a friend. A nerdy friend who made my life as a pregnant senior in high school ten times more bearable. I don't think he realizes, or cares, how much he meant to me that year. I don't think he ever will, but if I had never read that book and we never had that discussion I would've had one lonely last year of high school. I see him walking to target every once in a blue moon, but usually he doesn't see me. But I always wanted him to know how much I appreciated his company, blatant honesty and his unjudgementalness. To most people he is just the weird red head in the corner, but to me he is the wallflower friend that turned out to be not so much a wallflower, but a human being.
