The hilarious, and sometimes serious, way you portrayed your early life was pretty fun for me to follow along with. This book represented how fun creative non-fiction could be, it gave me this idea that if I actually make it out to be a decent novelist one day I could write a funny little real story about my own life, giving readers who enjoy what I write an insight on who I am. The book had many great parts in it, but the most remarkable parts to me would have to be, when you first started taking lessons from "O'Keefe", became close friends with your old bully "Michael", and to wrap it up when you got high and when you got busted.
I'll start with O'Keefe, the embarassment you must have felt when he said, "I am the master of this house, and in this house, I say who starts where, not anybody else, and not anybody's mommy. Is that clear? (pg. 30)". That part in particular would have broken lesser kids who wanted to further their own passion for different cultures, but even through your beginning abuse you still stuck with it. I could say I am the same in a way, my own passion is fantasy writing, and I would have to say I had my spirit broken many times in different ways. One I can recall is when I used a fantastical (I don't know if it's a word but it is now) approach to a science project. I used Dragons to represent... well I don't really remember what they did, I think molecules. I was allowed to do this because of what happened to me before, a kid in my class thought he was tough shit and wound up punching me hard in the face leaving a black eye. I wouldn't say I didn't deserve that, but when I was up there presenting that I got weird stares and laughed at by most of the people in the class.
With how Michael was concerned, I thought it was just cool how you and your old bully bonded over one thing, even if that one thing tore you two apart in the end. When you were practicing Kung Fu was when I was most intrigued by this encounter. "Let's work out this afternoon. (pg. 87)" Was a marking stone between you and Michaels relationship and mutual bonding over the art of Kung Fu. I have a situation not so similar, but still great in a way. One of my close buddies I have was a total freak back in 6th grade, and he even agrees with me too. He was like that one guy who would spy through your window as you took a shower type of freak, well that's what I took him for. Being an outcast myself, to outcast someone really says something, but sometime during 6th grade, perhaps towards the end, I had mutual respect for him and actually got to know him better. I didn't treat him in my mind like I did before, but rather I changed for the better and became friends with him. I would say I was Michael in this situation.
Now, when you got high was just the funniest part of the book to me. In your quest for enlightment you looked for it in a hallucinagin, thinking what you saw was you seeing the world clearly. The funniest part of this was when you got the bright idea to grow pot in your house, the funniest quote to me was when your younger brother just pointed it out to your father. Isn't this weird? This picture lookls just like the little plants that have been coming up in a bunch of Dad's pots. (pg 186)" I was laughing hard at your own expense and how easily your little brother called you out on your little scheme. I had a similar situation myself, but it was when I was like 8. I stole, maybe, over 200 pokemon cards from meijer, just stuffed the packs in my pockets and opened them up when I came home. My older brother thought I was "Holding out" on him with the cards and exposed me for stealing the cards themselves. We weren't able to give them back, but it's funny to me now that the most I've ever stolen is 200 cards, maybe 75$, worth of pokemon cards!
It was entertaining to read of your early life and how I can even relate it to my own life, it was worth the time to sit down and read this fantastic book. Hope to find more as I go on.
From Vincent Bruno
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