Misfit Theater Company 2

7. Self-Reliance

I'm so preoccupied and anxious about tomorrow's cast list posting that it isn't until I'm walking home from school with Thatcher that I remember we planned to hang out in his shed and read through Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance," which is due for Mr. Taylor's class tomorrow. After a few text messages between me and my mom, I am clear to take the early after school hours to read and annotate the essay as long as I'm home by dinner time at 6:00pm.

"This is long," I say after taking it out of my binder for the first time all week. "Do you think we will get this all read and annotated by the time I have to go?"

"That's two and a half hours," Thatcher says with a chuckle. "I think we can manage."

Thatcher's shed is usually our peaceful place, where we can get away from his dad and his little brothers, who become increasingly more annoying the longer Thatcher and I date, and where we can be away from my mom's watchful gaze, which, again, becomes increasingly more annoying the longer Thatcher and I date.

Thatcher takes out his binder and the packet of Emerson's essay, and now he's all business.

"OK, so, we will read this together," he says, though he means he will read it out loud while I listen to understand. He's good at making me feel like I'm contributing to reading assignments.

He starts off reading the text, and even though I have become better at reading Shakespeare and this text should be easier, it is way harder. I have no idea why this guy is starting off his essay about being self-reliant by talking about painters and art. I'm only really understanding what Thatcher is reading every other sentence or so, but it sounds like an old-fashioned self-help book.

"Imitation is suicide." OK, so I will be myself, and not imitate others.

"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world." OK, so as I go further into the world, I will forget what my inner voices told me to do before.

"My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady." OK, so I will live simply and not seek out fame and fortune. Except that I want that. I want to be an actress, and aren't the most success ones famous? So shouldn't I want my life to be glittering? What's wrong with a little glitter?

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." OK, so I should be the same way I am when I'm alone as I am in public.

"I love that line," Thatcher says after reading it. "But I don't know if I do that. Like, who am I when I'm alone? I don't do anything when I'm in solitude," he says, sort of laughing at himself. "So if I just stand in the middle of a crowd, looking at my phone, I'm a great man? Who are we alone?"

"Maybe Emerson means we shouldn't be fake. Like, if we are going to say something in solitude, we should say it in public too," I say. I wonder how Gina is reading this now.

"Probably. It's funny, though, because back then, that's probably what he meant. But now we have phones and we are constantly in public, in a sense at least, because we are on the internet. And way too many people are totally comfortable being their most terrible selves on the internet. That's not greatness to me. So, actually, I don't like this line," Thatcher says with a laugh. "I've found too many problems with it."

I think about this whole conundrum for a moment. Thatcher has a point in questioning it: Who are we when we are alone? I'd argue I'm sort of boring and quiet. Is that the real me? And this theater version is the persona I've grown into as a misfit? Who is the real Janie?