I LOVE BLOGGING. =]

We had an extremely loud and incredibly productive conversation today. It was MY idea first that when Oskar described 9/11 backwards it reminded me of when Billy was watching the video on Dresden and he saw it backwards. It makes both of them with that they could change a situation that simply cannot be changed. It also gave them both a very negative outlook on life. I was also very upset by the fact that the grandma left to live in the airport. Oskar already lost his dad who was the only person who really understood him and his grandma is the only other person that even comes close and she leaves him too. I thought that it was really selfish of her to do that to Oskar after all that he had been through. I was upset that the renter didn't tell Oskar that he was his grandpa. Of all times then was the time Oskar would need a grandpa. The end of this book was overall upsetting. I was also upset by the fact that when Oskar and his mom finally had a moment where they really came together and were close and she tells him that his dad called her on her cell phone when he was in the building that Oskar didn't show her the messages. Those were her husband's final words and he is so selfish as to hide them from his own mother. I really hope that the picture was of his dad. Even though digging the coffin up was REALLY messed up on a couple of different levels Oskar clearly needed that closure to move on from what happened so I suppose it was a good thing. The new book for Stuff That Has Happened To Me was also symbolic of him moving on and hopefully growing stronger from this terrible experience.

GUYS IM HAVING A MOMENT!

Today, like all other days, we had another awesome discussion in our lit circle. My main moment today was when we were talking about the characters and how they are all emotionally, well we couldn't decide on a word but, distraught, incapacitated, disabled, etc. While talking about this I mentioned that these characters, mom Oskar, grandma, and grandpa, all have one thing in common: they all lost someone they really loved. For Oskar it was his dad, the one person on the planet who really understood him. For Oskar's mom it was her husband, for obvious reasons. For the grandparents it was Anna. For the grandma she was so close with her sister in so many ways and losing her was tragic. The grandpa was in love with her so losing her was obviously very painful for him as well. Their relationship blooms off their mutual love for Anna and trying to salvage what they have left of her. These people all lost someone of great importance to them. And now they have trouble sharing and expressing their emotions because they feel that if they do that then they will become close to whoever they are sharing with and if they come close to that person then the pattern will continue and they will lose that person in some way. We also talked about the long term effects these attacks must have had on this boy. I said that I would be afraid to go into tall buildings and petrified to go into airplanes if I was him. The other thing is that now he notices what things, like ferries, would be good potential attack targets which isn't something a younger boy should be thinking about. This does make him mature but it also raises concerns for his future. He is already bruising himself and we discussed that as he gets older we hope that doesn't further evolve into cutting and eventually suicide because he is 10 and already thinks of time as just slowly getting closer to death. It was kind of a sad discussion today. =(