Hound Dog True: Part 2

Part 2 of my conversation about Hound Dog True with Jen. Click here to see part 1. We had this conversation the other night in a Google doc.  Jen’s text is pink and I am black.

I’m glad you are liking Hound Dog True.  It was hard for me to read the first time. I had to do lots of rereading. I really liked it, but Mattie was hard for me to relate to at first.  It just felt like, as a teacher, that I really needed to get to know her.

I like Mattie

Why?

She just seems like she desperately wants to fit in and wants to have friends but she’s had such a hard time in the past and she doesn’t know how to take the risk and how to even think about what it might be like to have a friend. It seems like she’s just had a hard time before.

I was a shy kid…you wouldn’t believe it to know me now, but I was super shy. I used to hate any time I had to go somewhere for the first time by myself – the first day of camp, the first day of school, the first day of a job even. I wanted to sit and talk to my dad in the car for as long as I possibly could before I would have to go in and face something new and unknown. I can relate to Mattie in that way.

Were you ever shy?

Well, I don’t like change.  I try to stay in my comfort zone, where I am totally not shy, but when I get around people for the first time, I am super quiet.  My wife says that if I didn’t meet her in high school that I would have remained single forever.  My first impressions usually leave a lot to be desired.

This is how people really talk about books:)

When I first met you in real life you weren’t shy but when we were in a big group you did seem more quiet than I had expected you to be. I thought you would be jumping on tables and talking a mile a minute but you were very chill.

I was really nervous that night. Meeting you, Alyson, and Tom was scary. Plus I was trying to juggle the world that I live in with my friends from home, and my twitter world. My two worlds were colliding.  It was weird, and I was scared.  I always want people to like me, and I’m always worried that I will disappoint people.

That is kind of sad.

This is what it’s like for people to talk about books when you trust the other person to not judge or criticize your feelings about the book.

I think when you say you didn’t want to disappoint people, that’s exactly what Mattie feels. She wants to have a friend and be a friend but she doesn’t even know how to do that and be comfortable in doing that. What if she does something wrong or says something wrong and then a potential friend instead turns mean. It’s scary.

Yes! That is exactly how I felt.  I wanted you and Tom to like me.  You were so nice, and easy going. I was so worried that I would say or do something that would make you guys realize what a dufus I am.

Why do you think you out grew your shyness? Did it happen fast?

It seemed like it happened fast but I think there were lots of things that actually contributed to it over time. I think being a good student really helped. I had confidence because of that. Since I didn’t have to worry that much about grades and stuff, I was able to have fun with friends and I had some really great friends who let me be myself and who were themselves right along with me. When I went to high school I met even more people because there were two towns that fed into our high school. I had lots of different groups of friends and it didn’t matter that much that I wasn’t in the popular kids’ group in high school because there were so many people. I had a few jobs in school, I worked for Kumon math centers and was a camp counselor and that helped me I think.

I feel like I did a lot of teambuilding when I was in high school and that helped a lot, too. I’m naturally a reflective person – or maybe it’s not naturally, maybe I’ve had all these experiences the have helped me to become reflective – like going  through teambuilding for different reasons. I have learned a lot about myself and about life and in general I think that helped me just be less and less shy. I’m much more likely to stick out my hand and introduce myself now than I was when I was a little kid.

I need to take some tips from you. My life is like total reverse.  My senior year of high school I led 200 people every Tuesday and Friday nights in the school student section during basketball games. Picture jumping-on-desk-Colby for two hours a night.  I could totally control those people, and we had a rocking time every night.  People came to the games for the crowd as much as the game.

Then I went to college and talked to nobody. NOBODY.
I am too sad to type more:(

Oh! I’m so sorry. 😦 That makes me sad. You don’t have to talk about it. Are you connecting more with Mattie now? Maybe you didn’t want to relate to her really.

Yes, and I don’t like it one bit.

I hate remembering sad things but hopefully you grew from it somehow. You should write your story so you can tell it to students and talk to them about your experience and then give advice for what you think they should try to do in college. But not until you feel like you can.

Maybe hearing your story will help.  Right now I am totally happy and comfortable with everything, so as long as my life doesn’t change at all I’ll be fine.

The only thing you can count on to never change is that life is always changing. 🙂

Book are powerful

It was really hard for me to tell anyone about how I felt about my spelling bee disaster. I don’t think I ever revealed it to anyone until a boyfriend I had my senior year in high school. Now I’m a little more able to talk about it and not worry about it as much but in school everyone thought I was so smart so to tell anyone how I had failed so miserably at spelling bicycle was ridiculous.

I don’t think it was ridiculous. Just hard.  You just had to learn how to be Hound Dog True.

I still have no idea what the heck that phrase even means…had you heard it before?

Never.

Okay, I’ll be patient and wait to see what it’s about.