The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer Smith

Cover via Goodreads.

Rating: 3/5 stars.

Cute. That’s the word I kept coming back to when I read this book. Not pulchritudinous. Not horrendous. Cute.

I guess I expected more from a title and a book jacket that promised an intense and zany romance.  Seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan meets British Yale student Oliver on a plane ride to attend her divorced father’s second wedding. She’s not happy about it, but something about Oliver makes her open up. Within 24 hours they form a close bond and Hadley comes to terms with the dysfunction of her family, as well as the boy who she’s known for less than a day – even when it’s felt like forever.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Cover via Goodreads.

5/5 stars.

A lot of the literature I’ve read for school this year has disappointed me. It’s great that we got to read and watch The Glass Menagerie as part of my AP Lit class, because I reclaimed my title as extremely obsessive fanboy extraordinaire.

There’s just so much to love in this play.

Here Comes the Rainbow

There once was a boy named Thomas, who had to run from the rain.

All his life, Thomas lived in a box. It was a nice box, full of food, clothes, and toys. When he was little, he wrote on the walls of the box. He slept in the box, he played games in the box, he read stories in the box. He had everything anyone could ever want in this little box, all of the things he needed to live.

But the box came with one bad part: it always rained.

Letting Go

“You are my perfect grandson,” my grandmother says. It comes out as a whisper, like everything she’s said in the past few weeks. Gray hair finally starts to show, a delayed indication of her old age. It’s hard for me to hear her, even harder to think about her more visible mortality.

There are different versions of perfection. Mine entails that every action I take has a purpose.

Is Having Babies Selfish?

Baby me. I used to be so innocent and adorable, I wonder what went wrong…

Here’s my foreseeable future: go to college, get an undergraduate degree in English/Psychology/Philosophy, go to graduate school, solidify a successful career, get married, have kids. Sounds like a plan, especially after throwing in a mother with anger issues and the fact that I don’t know how to drive yet. As you can see, I’ve thought about my future a lot.

But here’s something I haven’t thought of yet: why do I want kids?

The Fight Song of the Tiger Son

My handy dandy suitcase.

Floss, Latin textbook, ratty T-shirt, notebook. As I threw these things into my suitcase, I wondered whether I would survive that day.

I ran out of my house. Wearing shorts and a thin jacket, the cold cut at me even though the sun still shone. Shouldering my backpack and holding my suitcase in both arms, I felt like a fictional character, running away from home. Except this time everything was real.

I made it a few blocks down until I saw her car approach me. Contemplating whether or not to make a run for it, I knew I wouldn’t escape – no mile time was fast enough to outpace an angry mother. Her beige car pulled up alongside the road, and she lowered her window to yell at me.

“Get back in the house, now!” my mother screamed.

Minutes before, she had threatened to kill me. Inside my house, she had started one of her angry outbursts, but it felt more dangerous than all of the other ones. In that moment, standing on the sidewalk of the road, heart racing, I defied my mother for the first time.

No Normal Life

I’m seventeen and I don’t know how to drive a car. Every time I see two parents talking to one another without screaming, I gaze in awe. I haven’t gone to Prom and I doubt that I will.

Sometimes I wonder how my childhood would have been if not for my mom. What would it have been like to grow up in an environment entrenched in caring as opposed to cruelty? Which friends might I have met, who might have I turned out to be, what might I have done? With only a few months left before my eighteenth birthday, every chance I have to experience an average life is slipping away.

Unpopular Opinion: Incest Isn’t Wrong

I don’t mention it often on this blog, but I have a brother. The thought of having any sort of bond with him besides a brotherly one disturbs me – I would rather watch a kitten get shot. Okay, maybe not the most pleasant hypothetical situation, but I think you get my point.

Here’s a question I’ve thought about ever since reading Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma: is consensual incest between adults wrong? I understand that genetically it can lead to abnormalities and illnesses, and I’m confident that no one would wish any harm upon his or her child. But we allow people who have a higher probability of producing children with birth defects to reproduce, so logically, why are we banning brothers and sisters from doing so?

Furthermore, as a firm supporter of interracial relationships and homosexual equality, I find it hypocritical to condemn two consenting adults for loving one another.

Between Mom and Jo by Julie Anne Peters

Cover via Goodreads.

Rating: 4/5 stars.

Although my parents are heterosexual, Between Mom and Jo still spoke to me personally. As someone who wishes to have children with a male partner one day, it was saddening to read about how Nick had to put up with the taunting and teasing of his peers.

Looking at it positively, at least he had two loving parents who supported him through it. All his life, he’s known Mom and Jo would be there for him. They’ve gone through tough times together, battling alcoholism, cancer, and death. Which makes it that much worse when Mom and Jo start having marital problems and Nick’s left with no one to turn to. How can he choose between the two people in his life whom he cares about the most?

A Post For My Father

A few nights ago, I wondered what it would feel like to cut off my ears.

I remember thinking something similar when I was thirteen or fourteen. I was in the car with my mom, sitting in the passenger seat as she screamed at me. This I was used to – what scared me was how she had formed her hands into fists and was punching the leather of her seat as well as the surface of the dashboard. While I cannot claim to remember exactly what had caused her anger, I do recall that it was something insignificant. Perhaps I had closed the car door a little too loudly. Maybe I looked at another boy who walked by for a little too long.

But, as she spewed poison and purged her anger, I thought to myself: I wonder what would happen if we got into a car accident right now. I wonder how much of myself I would be willing to give away for her to disappear. I proceeded to bargain mentally – would losing an arm be worth not having to put up with the abuse anymore? How about an arm and a leg? All of me?

Looking back, I realize how melodramatic and shallow those thoughts were.