The Outsiders
My sophomore year in high school was a really, really, REALLY bad year. I might not have survived that year were it not for S.E. Hinton's books, particularly Rumble Fish and The Outsiders. (Rumble Fish is also, incidentally, a fantastic movie, with a mind-blowing soundtrack by Police drummer Stewart Copeland.)
I would read The Outsiders every night before bed. When I finished it, I would start it over again. Somehow it gave me strength to get through the next day. (I really identified with the Johnny character, utterly fubar.) To me, though I knew she'd written the book when she was the age I was then, Hinton was nevertheless a literary goddess, as far away from me on a pedestal of greatness as one could get, so out of reach it seemed ludicrous to imagine I could ever be graced by her presence long enough to tell her she saved my life.
Cut to today. Hinton is now a big-time SPN fan (and she writes fanfic! So we're in good company here, folks!). I have a friend who follows her on Twitter. Sometimes she tweets back to something Hinton says, and Hinton often responds! Twitter hardly seems the forum for me to profess my undying gratitude and admiration to Hinton, but still, if you'd told that 15-year-old girl I was that one day my (then and now) best friend would be tweeting with her, my head would have exploded. ... Which made me realize how many aspects of my life now are so much more than my 15-year-old self ever, ever might have hoped. I had few expectations for my future beyond the glum assumption it would be as sucktastic as my life was then, but when I did dare to dream, I dreamed of being a musician and a writer, living in a cool apartment with my best friend, technology making life better and more fun, and it all came true.
Maybe I'll get a chance to tell Hinton what her accomplishments have meant to me (the idea no longer seems so far-fetched), but the real miracle is in how much life can change as your perspective changes.
I would read The Outsiders every night before bed. When I finished it, I would start it over again. Somehow it gave me strength to get through the next day. (I really identified with the Johnny character, utterly fubar.) To me, though I knew she'd written the book when she was the age I was then, Hinton was nevertheless a literary goddess, as far away from me on a pedestal of greatness as one could get, so out of reach it seemed ludicrous to imagine I could ever be graced by her presence long enough to tell her she saved my life.
Cut to today. Hinton is now a big-time SPN fan (and she writes fanfic! So we're in good company here, folks!). I have a friend who follows her on Twitter. Sometimes she tweets back to something Hinton says, and Hinton often responds! Twitter hardly seems the forum for me to profess my undying gratitude and admiration to Hinton, but still, if you'd told that 15-year-old girl I was that one day my (then and now) best friend would be tweeting with her, my head would have exploded. ... Which made me realize how many aspects of my life now are so much more than my 15-year-old self ever, ever might have hoped. I had few expectations for my future beyond the glum assumption it would be as sucktastic as my life was then, but when I did dare to dream, I dreamed of being a musician and a writer, living in a cool apartment with my best friend, technology making life better and more fun, and it all came true.
Maybe I'll get a chance to tell Hinton what her accomplishments have meant to me (the idea no longer seems so far-fetched), but the real miracle is in how much life can change as your perspective changes.