Thursday, March 12, 2009

Creep

What did you make of this story? Who was this guy calling young Ms. Hempel's house every night? What was going on with her parents?

It was kind of interesting to see Ms. Hempel at the age of her current students and think about how her experiences at that age probably affect how she relates to them now.
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5 comments:

kc said...

I liked this story a lot. I like how she was in that peculiar time of adolescence where the childishness of her brother (and his crazy pursuits) still holds a vague appeal even as she feels the tug of the "adult" world and the urge to leave childish things behind. She's very eager for the caller to believe she is an adult woman with an adult life. It's ironic that it takes the clear-eyed innocence of the brother to point out that the caller is a creep.

The adult life she invents for herself is kind of messed-up and dysfunctional, but she thinks it's terribly impressive. Then she realizes that her parents really do have a messed-up adult life, in which there is absolutely no charm.

I thought the caller was a more or less random guy or maybe someone who knew the family from a distance. What did you think?

She was just at the age where girls are extremely vulnerable to older male attention: old enough to feel flattered by it and young enough to not realize how damn creepy it is. (I knew more than one girl in high school who liked to parade her 23-year-old boyfriend around, but then later understood that there was something a little wrong with a grown man who was interested in dating 15-year-olds.)

From her own teen experiences, as you noted, Ms. Hempel understands the vulnerabilities of her students. She knows how tender their emotional lives are, how needy they are to feel whole and to belong somewhere.

8:15 PM, March 12, 2009
Ben said...

I felt like there was some connection between the caller and the radio host. But unless they were the same person, I don't know what connection there could be. I feel like I missed some clue.

It's great to see Ms. Hempel at the age of her students -- and I get the feeling that she's the only teacher there who remembers what being that age was like.

6:06 PM, March 16, 2009
kc said...

I think they were connected in the sense that they were both disembodied late-night voices coming into Beatrice's bedroom. They're kind of romantic links to the outside/adult world at the time of life when she was outgrowing, as all children do, the insular satisfactions of family life. She was becoming her own person, imagining herself with an existence apart from her parents and brother, and the voices in the night helped her in imagining her budding identity.

At the same time, her father (maybe in a midlife second adolescence) was imagining a new life apart for himself, too.

11:20 AM, March 19, 2009
Erin said...

I had trouble telling my brain to shut up during this story because I kept questioning things about the caller. Who is this guy? Why did he call the first time? Did he know the family? If he did, didn't he know she was just a kid? Didn't her parents hear the phone ring?

I think Bynum does a fantastic job of showing the perspective of adolescence and the weird things you're apt to think and do at that age. I remember feeling a similar romanticism and longing about the adult world through TV and radio. And the relationship between the young Ms. Hempel and her brother is great, as kc said, with the beginning of tension as she outgrows him in some ways.

10:35 AM, March 20, 2009
Erin said...

Also, if you're curious, the Ms. Hempel Web site has selections from her playlist: http://www.mshempelchronicles.com/Music.html

10:39 AM, March 20, 2009

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