The Glass Castle is a book of memoirs written by Jeannette Walls. Her family is essentially a bunch of nomads, traveling around the U.S. dodging bill collectors. Any time a situation got a little harry or her dad got sick of working, the family would up and move. I'll be honest, this book was a lot to handle at moments. I had to keep reminding myself that this was actually a set of memoirs and that I had found it in the "Non-fiction" section of my library. "No way this could happen in real life!" or "No way people like this actually exist!" were the thoughts that continually kept creeping back into my mind. I had to convince myself to keep reading a few times because it is too hard for me to hear about awful things happening to children. I've mentioned before, becoming a mother made a new kind of heartache arise in me every time something bad happens to a child. I can't watch Law and Order: SVU anymore because it's just too much!
I felt myself getting physically mad--no, not mad--livid/furious/irate over many of the responses the parents had to Jeannette and her siblings. The situations the parents put them in, the way the children were treated, the fact that more often than not, the kids were more responsible than the parents, drove me up the wall!
It brought me right back to when I was a teacher. I remember one student that came to me with a drop-out form. "What's this?" I asked him. "It's a form you have to sign so I can drop out." "But you're a senior, you literally have 6 months until you can graduate. Why don't you just stick it out until graduation?" "Because my parents disowned me and I have to work so I can eat and pay bills." AHHHHHH! If I could have told him everything I was thinking I would have told him, "You'll never go back for your GED like you think you will. It's not that you can't or don't have the intellect or intelligence to do so, it's because GEDs are expensive and quite frankly, not even close to the same as a high school diploma. Also, you're parents suck! That's right, I said suck! You only get to be a kid once and they stole that from you. They literally stole some of the most precious memories you will ever have right out from under you. The saddest part is that you will probably never fully understand what you missed out on! The amount of wasted potential that is balled up inside of you makes me want to cry, real tears of sorrow because you and I have come so far since you called me a 'bitch' the first month of school. I had big hopes and dreams of showing you just how awesome you could be! But instead, you're going to quit. Again and again and again, you're going to quit. Because your parents suck!"
But teachers don't get to say things like that. Especially not new teachers that haven't reached tenure yet. So instead I told him I wouldn't sign it. If he was going to drop-out, I didn't want any part of that. Then I learned I had to sign it. So I did. It makes me sick just thinking about it.
So yeah, it hurts me when bad things happen to children. The one thing that kept me going was that I knew the ending. I didn't actually know the ending, but being around kids enough, you start to get the sense about the ones that rise above. The ones that say, "screw you" to all the garbage their parents had filled them with and decide to find out what the world is really like for themselves. The book was written so well that I knew Jeannette had been one of those kids that rose above her parents and her upbringing.
Just thinking about this has got me all fired up again! It was a book filled with raw emotion. If you want a book that will make you feel, this book delivers.
