"Bully for you!"

Hey! So, as I guess you know, two weeks ago or something like that I went to Virginia to visit my cousins. We went to a consignment shop, and coolness upon coolness, I found a copy of Natalie Babbit's Tuck Everlasting. I don't know about you, but it was the in thing in our area in fifth and sixth grade. (Maybe as early as fourth, but I can't even remember two weeks ago, so cut me some slack, eh?) Well, mostly because every girl was in love with the actor who played Jesse, but that's besides the point because he was gorgeous and no one can be blamed. Was he even in any other movies? Look, it's neither here nor there. The point is, that the movie came out and the year after we actually had to read the book for sixth grade English, so talk about destiny. And the fact that it's an awesome book, and I can't remember the movie at all except for the one scene where Jesse tells Winnie how old he is.



So, if you weren't all caught up in the craze, let me give you a quick summary: Ten-year old Winnie is a girl annoyed by her overbearing life and her overbearing parents. In order to make true to a promise to a toad (nothing mystical here, really) she finally decides that she will run away. In the woods she comes upon a boy drinking from a fountain and demands she gets a drink too. Boy refuses, suddenly his mother and older brother appear and they kidnap her. Eventually, she discovers that they're immortal: the fountain Winnie observed Jesse drinking from was the legendary fountain of youth.



It's a child's book, so it's a relatively quick book, but seriously, it's a good book. I don't think I really got it when we read it six (six!?) years ago, and I don't think many kids do. I don't know many kids who really would get it the first time around. I certainly didn't understand the ending which I'm not going to spoil for you, but now I think I get why she did it. I don't know if I'd be brave enough to do the same thing, however...



Jesse confuses me. In the movie he seemed romantic and all, so I kind of expected to get that vibe from him again in the book. Wrong. He seemed kind of... selfish. I don't think he really loved Winnie in the book, I just think he was so excited to have someone new, you know? Enthralled with a normal human. But at the same time, it's kind of cruel to call him selfish for acting as he did and asking so much of Winnie: I mean, he's going to live forever. All alone. After I read the book the first time I remember wondering if he'd still be alive if the world were to blow up and the Tucks would be all alone in the great expanse of space, a la Loony Toons. That idea freaked me out. I mean... living forever. I'm scared to die. I think everyone is deep deep down, at least. But at the same time... living that great expanse of forever? You'd get bored. You'd long for death. You'd hate the cowardly little beastly greedy thing you were when and if you made the conscious decision to live forever (in the Tucks' case, regret stopping to drink in that spring) but at the same time, when you had the chance to die, you'd still be scared of it all ending, I'm sure. Try Hellsing by Kohta Hirano out, specifically volume eight. Vlad Dracul, all-powerful vampire, mourns his lost humanity, gets off on getting hurt because he misses the pain of being human--but is sick of it all. He just wants to die. However, when he is almost killed, he panics, cries a little, and then he realizes yes, I'm going to die, and accepts it. But he's still scared is my point. Jaded as he was, he was still terrified of it all ending. He was still human. But--yeah. Even if the Tucks somehow got the chance to end it all... would they really? I don't think Jesse really matured, I think he's still at the mental age of seventeen, and maybe he'd keep it. But for the older Tucks... I think the father would. The mother, maybe. The older brother would be on the fence. I don't know. It's really kind of impossible to predict, you know? Anyway... I think what I was trying to get to was this: "I'd rather die terrified than live forever"--Emily Horne and Joey Comeau

Maybe I'm just ranting, but hey, it means I'm one step closer to traveling throughout time, huh?



The father (just known as Tuck) is so melancholy, poor guy. But I love him. He talks about life as a wheel, constantly recycling and turning, how everyone is born and grows up, maybe has children, and then moves on for the next generation to do the same. And then he says that since he nor his family can't really die, they can't really live--and if he could figure out how to continue that cycle for himself again, he'd hop right to it. "'I want to grow again,' he said fiercely, 'and change. And if that means I got to move on at the end of it, then I want that, too.'" He's so melancholy sweet--like... like the way an old book smells. You know? Maybe not. But the poor guy. He's the most real of all the family. Of all the characters, I love him the most.



"'It'd be nice,' she said, 'If nothing ever had to die.' 'Well, now, I don't know,' said Miles. 'If you think on it, you come to see there'd be so many creatures, including people, we'd all be squeezed in right up next to each other before long.'" I just wanted to mark this because a lot of the time when Kurt Vonnegut speaks of futures, he says something along the lines of population has so increased that people are squeezed together like "drupelets", those little round bits that make up a surface of a raspberry or blackberry. The story I'm thinking of... I can't think of the name of... but it's when old people can decide to get euthanized (for 'patriotic reasons') at death parlors, which are always next door to a Howard Johnson's so they can have their last meal... crud, what's the name? Oh, duh. I was going to say it's in Welcome to the Monkey House--but not only is it the name of the collection, it's the story's name too. Hah!

I love the ending. It's sad, but the bit with a toad is a little crack of a smile at the end. Somehow, it doesn't seem as much of a loss, as long as the toad is alive and well. ...I was trying not to spoil things, but here comes the spoilers...
Jesse gives Winnie some spring water and asks her drink it when she turns seventeen so he can find her and they can be together forever. Winnie, bravely enough, decides nor to drink it--she pours it on her toad. It's--it's better in the book...


I also got an O Henry book. Ever since we read a short story by him in seventh grade, I've been pursuing a collection of his stories that have that story. Fortunately, this was the one--unfortunately... he's kind of terrible. The story in question is 'After Twenty Years', which is okay. I definitely was much more impressed with it when I first read it, but I still did get excited when they talk about noses. I like noses, and I find Roman noses oddly attractive. And I'm always like... OH MY GOD, ROMAN NOSE, JULIUS CAESAR? It's--I'm just crazy. But his stories... are really aged. And yes, he wrote them at the turn of the century--but I'm not cutting him any slack. There are a lot of stories I've read much older than his... and of course the culture and whatever is different... but they don't feel so dusty and stale. You know? His feel like old clothes you found in the old basement in a bag you're a little scared to open because there's probably something dead in there. His stories feel exactly like that. Though, he does use 'bully'. As in, 'bully day'! But still. His stories are hard to pay attention to. Which is kind of a shame, because in the introduction there are isolated quotes by him from his stories which are amazingly awesome or hilarious--but it hardly seems worth looking for them. (Which it wasn't--I was done after one-hundred-twenty some-odd pages.)

"But in time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art." One of them, which I loved, because it reminded me of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury when Spender tells the captain about how the martians' science and religion never were at odds, they intertwined perfectly.

"We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us." Made me chuckle.

The story I did love in here was 'The Pendulum'. Basically, a married man feels strangled in his life. He always feels awkward and stifled around his wife, and loves to be away from her. Come as it may, his wife is away one evening to visit a sick relation. She comes back later than expected, and while he is waiting, he can't help but imagine all these terrible things that must have happened to her--and what an awful person he was for taking her for granted. If and when she came back through the doors he would make up all his indifference to her and treat her as though a queen. However, the second she comes through the door--all he can think of how much he'd rather be away from her and leaves as usual. I don't know... I just really like how it went from romantic, Romeo-esque longing to the reality of it all. It is much easier to love someone while they are away! (I have a feeling I'm stealing that from someone, but who, I don't know...) But yeahhh. Quite a disappointment. It is not a bully day for you, O Henry! But John Green's bully day has just begun...