Making Connections

My parents got divorced when I was in middle school. We had what I assume is a typical custody arrangement--Momma got weekdays and Daddy got weekends. As an adult, I see lots of problems with this arrangement. There is less time for fun stuff during the week, so the weekday parent gets shorted on the fun time. There is less drama and life problems on weekends, so the weekend parent gets shorted on the life lessons and emotional support/bonding. I don't have a better solution; it's just an observation.

My sister, dad, and I had our weekend traditions. One was movie rentals.* I'm sure this started before the divorce (as I remember my sister making fun of me because I picked Stand by Me and we watched that in the old house), but I mostly remember this as Daddy-time. He'd pick us up and we'd go rent movies. We'd each pick one (total: 3), and at the end of the weekend, before he'd drop us off at our grandparents', we'd choose the theme. What did all the movies--picked by 3 very different people--have in common? There was always a theme. Even when we switched to movies on cable, there were always themes. We could always make connections, even if we had to pick something silly (bad Southern accents, for example--OMG, so many actor-people completely suck at Southern accents. You wouldn't think it'd be that hard, but apparently it is).

It's a fun memory of my dad and it came back in full force this week when I read two completely unrelated books back-to-back and was really struck by how they connected. On my list over there, you will see The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen and Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton**, fiction and non-fiction respectively. I read Just a Geek first. Both books address to varying degrees how disconnected who we are as adults is to who we were as teens, how hard is it to judge our teen selves by our adult standards and see our adult selves through our teen expectations, how we see our teen mistakes as so much graver than they really are, and how those choices we make as teens mean so much as adults. In both books I was overwhelmed by the characters'*** needs to reconcile and resolve those differences. It was really interesting to read one and think "OMG, just forgive yourself already; teens are supposed to be stupid" and then read the other and think the exact same thing. Obviously, the books are different, the issues are different, and the resolutions are different. But it was neat and I'm sharing. And I really enjoyed reading both books; I took far more from them than I expected.

Now, for two criticisms:

1. Just a Geek--I have no problem with WW reprinting material from his blog. That is totally what I expected and wanted to buy. But, dude, reprinting a story from his first book? Not cool. Even with the neat little meta-narrative frame. I hate it when short story writers do that in their collections too--all new collections have one or two stories from a previous one. I loved your previous work, that's why I bought this one. You don't need to give it to me again. I understand the publishing reasons for this, but I don't have to like it.
2. The Girl Who Chased the Moon--If you haven't read the book and plan to, you might want to skip this paragraph. It's a bit of a spoiler because I reveal something revealed at the end of the book, but it shouldn't be a surprise to readers. But anyway, skip this last bit if you don't want to know.
   Now, here's my criticism: if it's creepy when a vampire who sparkles in the sunlight sneaks into a girl's bedroom to watch her sleep, then it's creepy when a boy who glows in the moonlight sneaks into a girl's bedroom to watch her sleep. It's not romantic, no matter what the teen girl thinks. That said, this is soooooo much better than Twilight and way more complicated. I love SAA's work, but when I got to this part I was all, "Really?" and "stupid Twilight ruining everything." Because the glowing thing was a neat quirk until I made the Twilight connection. And stalking is never romantic.

*Another was croissants and root beer for Saturday breakfast and Steak Out delivery on Friday Nights.

**See, another connection. 'Cause WW was in Stand by Me.

***I know Wheaton is real, but autobiographical writing is just as constructed as fictional writing.