A ginger-ale drinking game

[asakiyume]

Thank you, everyone, for your good wishes last entry. The healing angel is recovering quite nicely, though still with lingering joint pain. Hope that goes away for him. This week is winter vacation, so that gives him more time to recuperate without missing more school (he's already missed two weeks).

In English he's supposed to be reading The Kite Runner. Although I was pleasantly surprised by his last book, Angela's Ashes, this one is every bit as awesomely depressing as Good-for-You English-class books come. We've been reading it out loud, and to get us through the current chapter (we're still in the very early part of the book), we together created a drinking game--but with the drink being ginger ale.

Behold:



The check marks represent how many times the thing in question came up (and consequently how many times we took a drink). Hassan is the narrator's childhood playmate and servant, whom the narrator treats rottenly. The narrator's got Big Regret about this as the adult telling the story, but right now we've been working up to whatever Really Terrible thing he's going to do to Hassan. Hence drinking game prompt no. 1: take a drink every time the narrator makes a dark allusion to the thing that made him what he is today.

Drinking game prompt no. 2 and no. 4 are self-explanatory. No. 3 is my shorthand for "disappointment in failing to receive his father's love"--the narrator's father is emotionally distant and not very interested in his son. Drinking game prompt no. 5, Hazaras, means take a drink every time Hazaras, the despised ethnic group that Hassan belongs to, are mentioned.

(In writing this entry I went and looked at a plot summary to see just how bad a thing we're in for. Oh. My. God.)

Let's change the subject. Here is a photo of a fire hydrant with a metal marker on it. It looks sort of like the hydrant is a child holding a balloon. If the snow gets high, the idea is that the metal marker is still visible, so (a) snowplows will be careful and (b) people will dig it out. As you can see, one of the neighbors did indeed dig it out. Thank you, civic-minded neighbor!



For a couple of years, someone or ones went around bending and twisting the markers . . . but that person (or those people) must have lost interest in that very mild form of troublemaking, because there's the marker, tall and straight.

Comments

[negothick.livejournal.com]

Kite Runner was the "One Book, One Region" (Eastern Connecticut) selection the year after it appeared (2003). It was "challenged" by parents at several of the participating high schools, so some of your commenters are right in their speculations. I was not asked to lead any library book discussions on it, so I gave it a miss. Now I'm glad I did!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with schools reading books that contain plot elements like this one does. Shying away from traumatic material simply because it's traumatic seems like intellectual and moral dishonesty. What I object to about the lurid plot event in this book (the first big one; I think there are other, lesser ones upcoming) is that it's used simply to be a (missed) growth opportunity for the main character, and not even in any way that's meaningful for his relationship with the victim. It's really an example of "I need my main character to have something he's utterly ashamed of. I know. I'll have him witness sadistic violation of a kid whom he himself has a half-friendship, half-abusive relationship with, and have him do nothing. I'll making it the most lurid thing I can think of." And then that just gets turned into fuel for the main character's navel gazing and thoughts on his relationship with his father. Charming.

So yeah, I don't object to the book on the grounds of the plot elements, and I think kids can "handle" it, it's just that I don't think the book is very good.