![]() ![]() Every woman in a high collar and bun could be a Polly every straw-hatted little boy becomes Tom. Tom and Becky, Injun Joe, Amy Lawrence, Huck, Aunt Polly – from childhood, my conception of classic Americana owes a great debt to these characters. It may even be the first chapter book I put my mind to. Nothing may have influenced my childhood more than the time spent poring over Tom’s adventures. I can still picture the cover – Tom strolling regally down the road, barefooted, fishing pole in hand, behind the gingham-clad, blushing Becky Thatcher, steamboat in the background. I can still remember my very first encounter with Tom – from my much loved collection of Great Illustrated Classics (my first personal library, maybe?). ![]() Oh, Tom Sawyer! Rascal, liar, ladies-boy, wicked heathen … be still my heart. She is duped into becoming a member of a club formed to hate her. ![]() Only after she joins is she informed that it's a "hate Danielle" club. Danielle is hesitant, but could not say no to what she thought was a gesture of friendship. Having just about given up, she is begged by several kids to join a club. For years, shy and quiet Danielle has yearned for friendship only to be continually rebuffed. With passion for their interests and strong inner feelings, these seven individuals have much to offer.īut in spite of, or maybe because of their talents and individualism, they exist in the “cafeteria fringe.” Even Whitney, who is part of the in-crowd, feels that she has to continually prove herself and fights daily to keep her spot in the party car.Īt times I was shocked at the cruelty with which kids treat each other. It's hard to decide which one of the students I grew most fond of: Danielle, the loner Noah, the band geek Eli, the nerd Joy, the new girl Blue, the gamer Whitney, the “popular bitch ” or Regan, the weird girl.Įach one, in his or her own way, is a smart and creative individual. In The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, Alexandra Robbins recounts the lives of six high school students and one new teacher. Joseph Helen, our 8th grade teacher, known to all the students as “Jake” had a lot of Aunt Polly about her, and so I modeled myself on “Jake” and tried to channel Aunt Polly, with a little Jonathan Winters’ Maude Frickert thrown in. On the Halloween prior, I decided that I wasn’t going to get dressed up in any of the more typical outfits – superheroes, skeletons, ghosts, the characters in the YMCA song – no, I was going to paint Dorchester, MA, red as an old woman.Īnd so, when it was announced that we were going to perform some scenes based on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I figured, “I got the outfit, I’m gonna play the part of Aunt Polly.” As it turned out, I had no such aunt, and my mother had nothing about Aunt Polly about her, but Sr. Who in their right mind would want to be Aunt Polly, you might ask, and me a boy as well?īut I looked on it as a challenge – could I, a 12 year old boy, bring off this crotchety old maid? I felt I was up to the challenge. ![]() We all got to choose parts, and I petitioned long and hard (it seemed so, for there was heavy resistance) for the part of Aunt Polly. Peter’s enacted a little play based on some scenes from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. For a brief shining moment in the spring of 1969, I was Aunt Polly. ![]()
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