Girls Don't Cry | The Outsiders

Five

When I was a little girl, before my mom started drinking, when things were simpler, when it didn't matter if you were poor, and I was too much of a boy to realize that I was supposed to a girl, I thought I would be a good actress. I always like watching Johnny Carson and Red Skelton on TV. Mom didn't like me watching TV, but on the occasion where she let me, I would sit and watch the Tonight Show with her and she would make cookie dough just for the sake of eating it raw. She didn't like to bake just because she always forgot she was supposed to check on the cakes and stuff to make sure they didn't burn.

As I got older, I thought maybe I could be an actress. And then, before I knew it, I'd forgotten all about it because I was so wrapped up in taking care of Greg and Claire. I guessed actors had to be in Hollywood to try and land themselves roles in stuff. You couldn't just wake up and you're on the set. It's not like I discovered this concept, I just slowly became more aware that my fantasy of being a movie star wasn't such a big cut and so I eventually gave up on it. I didn't tell anyone. It was a long lost dream and you lose dreams sometimes. Doesn't mean you give up on life; you take a break for a little while and dream up a new dream.

I brought this up now because the other day when I was in English, Mr. Jones asked me if I'd taken his advice by writing down what was bothering me. He said he'd noticed I'd eased up a lot more in his class, especially when we were reading. No one judged you in college. Not like in high school, anyway. People have their own thing they gotta do and people become more aware of what's their business and what's not.

I told Mr. Jones I did take his advice and he asked me if he could read what I'd written. I hesitated at first, but after thinking about it for a minute, I nodded and handed him my composition notebook. I apologized for my spelling and he just waved me off. He'd seen it all, I reckoned. He told me I didn't have to sit there and watch him read and I was glad. I didn't want to have to think about what he might be thinking while reading what I'd written. If you dig.

When he gave it back to me in class the next day, he didn't say anything. After class, he called me back and he said he was sorry that I had to go through what I went through. I shrugged it off. It was alright because the past is the past.

I told him there was lots more to the story and he said I was a mighty fine writer, even if I'm not so good at spelling. He said spelling doesn't matter when the story itself has a lesson. He said he hoped my story has a lesson. I don't know about a lesson, to be completely honest. I don't have a moral. I just go along with whatever comes next and I tell my thoughts exactly like how I think them. I don't alter them. Except maybe to filter out some bad words, but that's different. You know what I mean, right?

After he said he hoped my story has a lesson to it, and I replied with "maybe it does and maybe it doesn't", he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Before I could reply, he told me to write that down and how I felt about it. So I did. Just now.

I don't know why I never told anyone about how I wanted to be an actress as a little girl. I guess it's just one of those things where you fantasize about it a little bit, but you don't ever make an attempt to make that fantasy a real dream. It's just a thing in life, I guess. You either accept it as it is and move on, or you don't.

Maybe that's how I felt about Sodapop Curtis. I accepted the fact a long time before he even started going with Sandy that he could never love me. At least not in the way that I loved him. I don't know what it was about that Sodapop Curtis, but he had the kind of glow where, even if the people he's hanging out with ain't your kind, you still want to get to know them and even when you've known him almost your whole life, there's still stuff you wanna talk to him about.

Mr. Jones asked me if Sodapop's name was his real name or if I'd just used it in place of his real one. I said his real name was actually Sodapop and, by golly, he got a real good kick out of that. I said it was an original name because his dad was an original man and Mr. Jones said he would quite like to meet Sodapop Curtis. I didn't reply.