High School Required Reading

When I was in high school, like everyone else, I was forced to read books and plays that I, then, considered utterly useless to my life in any way, shape or form. I was already reading serious shit like Atlas Shrugged outside class and learning far more from that than any drivel the Charles Dickens could ever teach me about being a gentleman in Victorian England. Dear God, we're trying to prevent teens from committing suicide and you make them read that crap? Shame on you for ever thinking that Great Expectation was anything decent to read. It's not.

Most books I read under protest, pouting and giving very strident points in classes where we had to discuss the plots and characters. I was never led in the directions my teachers hoped and could be a mite disruptive in my debates. It was finally agreed upon, by all and sundry, at the end of my sophomore year, that I would be allowed to choose what I would read for a grade from an alternate list. One, which I was happy to find out, were also the books I was having to read for my college English lit courses that I was taking concurrently. They thought they were so smart.

However, in my junior year, the reading list was American Lit, of which I had no interest. However, I chose to read the books. I read utter crap like Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and then... I got to the good shit. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World. I'd already read Atlas Shrugged by this time and I found my confirmation bias against Statism fed mightily by these books.  It stood me in good stead.

Granted, I'd read Alas, Babylon, Malevil, and other dystopian stories earlier, but those books stayed with me. Bless the Beasts and Children fed my Libertarian heart.

I stubbornly refused to read any poetry and only grudgingly memorizes Thanatopsis to pass Junior English. Back then I hated William Shakespeare and all he stood for. I learned to love him in my 20s because of Start Trek: TNG and Kenneth Branaugh's Henry V.

But those books of my junior year shaped most of my thinking that was set for the rest of my life.

My children never had to read them. But they sure as fuck read the Dickens' crap, along with the nihilistic whining of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Fitzgerald. And you seriously wonder why they are all shitting themselves and burning buildings down thinking Momma Gubmint is just waiting to take care of them so they won't ever have to be responsible for anything in their lives?

Now, I am going to piss so many so called literati here and admit, I absolutely hated Catcher in the Rye. It was nothing but the self-indulgent whining of a disturbed, immature mind that imparted absolutely nothing. If that formed your life and thinking, seek therapy. Same goes for anything written in the the 20th century in America.

However, I absolutely loved To Kill a Mockingbird. Granted, I'd seen the movie first, but reading the book furthered my understanding of the book and the lesson endured. Again, I fed my confirmation Bias that was innate, as far as I can tell. I've always had a visceral reaction to racism.

When we stopped teaching the lessons in the books that I learned to love, we stopped teaching valuable lessons to our teens and having meaningful conversations over those topics over non-existent family dinners. I think I was the only person of my acquaintance who insisted on sit down dinners and a discussion of the day. Now it's nearly a miracle if parents ever speak to their children out loud. I guess I was pretty awful not caring enough to allow them to slip away so once they went away I would be utterly shocked how they came back to me.

No, my only reaction to my daughter coming out to me as a Liberal Democrat was, "Yeah, honey, we knew." I mean, they do make themselves pretty obvious. I love her and she is allowed to be what works for her. Just don't shove it down my throat. I return that courtesy.

If you get a chance, and you have not read the books I've listed here, even the ones I hated, I suggest taking the time to do so. You can compare and contrast and then look out on the world and do the same thing I do every single day.

Look out upon the world, point, smile and say, "Ha! Saw that coming!"