Diving in to the Teenage Way of Life (Blog 2)

To tell you the truth, I loved the way Chris Crutcher wrote Ironman. He showed the teenager’s perspective, for once, on issues presented in the novel, such as abuse and homosexuality. Many authors display adolescents as corrupt crazy machines but we are not that oblivious to the world around us. It’s as if half the population of adults can’t remember what being a teenager felt like. We are trying to control our lives as much as we can. Crutcher went in to the head of a typical confused teenager, Bo Brewster, and wrote down what he thought his thoughts and opinions would be. During the entire book, Bo tells part of his story through letters to a radio talk show host. He will probably never actually send these letters, but it is his way of journaling. It made me wonder if other people do things like that instead of just keeping journal or diary. It probably helps get your opinions and dreams out on paper instead of keeping them bottled up.
The issues presented in Ironman were smart issues to write about. They are common topics in many everyday conversations. Bo comes face to face with the topic of homosexuality because his good friend and teacher admits that he is gay. At first, Bo is completely taken back and avoids Lionel Serbousek (his friend and teacher) at all costs. I think that confusing thoughts were running through his head during this time. Avoiding his friend proves to be difficult because Bo is supposed to train with Lionel’s swimming team every morning. Training for the triathlon is on the top of his list of priorities and he has to find other ways to squeeze alternate training in to his tight high school schedule. It’s just not worth giving up a great relationship because of one tiny thing. Mr. S. feels gets really hurt because of how Bo acts. He doesn’t understand what a shock Bo felt when he found out. I think he expected Bo to take it more maturely. Since I am exposed to this often in the real world, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal to me. Luckily, in the end, Bo accepts the way Mr. S. is and treats him like a normal friend again. This was a major step in Bo’s life. It was a hard decision to make but he handled it well after thinking about it in depth. After all, Mr. S. was still the same person. Chris Crutcher has Bo explain to Mr. S. why he felt the way he did, which was interesting. He moved on but still carried that important experience with him.
Another reason that I enjoyed reading Chris Crutcher’s masterpiece was that he dove in to the teenage way of life, not just their perspective and opinions. He talked about developing a relationship between opposite genders and showed you that even adolescents can fall in love. Typical teenage relationships have many stop signs and speed bumps. This was the same way with Bo and Shelly’s relationship. It was not a fairy tale ride- it was reality. To show the connection between two people through words is extremely difficult but Chris Crutcher did an amazing job with it.
When Crutcher described the horrible lives of the other Anger Management members, I felt like I would never complain again. It really made me appreciate what I have and what I don’t have to deal with. After that, I thought about something else. How can you rate your problems compared to other people’s problems? Some people might think that a world changing event occurred when in some one else’s eyes, it could be miniscule. Then I realized that the effect that a difficult situation has on each person is different relating to what they are used to. If someone has been through tragedy after tragedy, a dying pet fish might not matter to them as much as it would matter to someone who has not experienced much pain in their life. To that person, it could be devastating. It’s just like some people think that spiders are the worst thing in the world when others simply ignore them. We should not look at our problems and say they don’t matter because someone else’s sister just died, for example. Everyone is different and everyone’s problems have some significance.