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Coming of Age Videos 5 videos
What are the perks of being a wallflower? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
So what are the perks of being a wallflower? Seriously—we're asking.
Is Boo Radley the quintessential creep? Or, is he just isolated and misunderstood, hiding himself away to avoid people's judgment? You decide. He j...
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Summary 58820 Views
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Description:
So what are the perks of being a wallflower? Seriously—we're asking.
Transcript
- 00:04
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a la Shmoop. My name is Charlie, and I’m what you’d
- 00:11
call a…
- 00:12
….professional people watcher.
- 00:16
Some people think I’m cool, but I don’t know why, since I mostly just sit back and
- 00:20
observe.
Full Transcript
- 00:21
Honestly, high school is scary. Well, it’s not all bad. I do have two whole
- 00:28
friends and a really cool English teacher who gives me lots of extra books to read on
- 00:32
the side…
- 00:33
…so I guess he’s my friend, too.
- 00:36
Ok, I know being assigned more homework doesn’t sound all that nice…
- 00:40
…but I’m the kind of guy who likes to sit back and watch other people’s lives
- 00:45
happen…
- 00:45
…and books are the perfect way of doing that. People in books can’t get creeped
- 00:49
out when you keep staring at them from the corner of the room.
- 00:54
My two friends who aren’t middle-aged English teachers are Patrick and Sam.
- 00:58
Patrick is awesome. He’s also gay… which I found out is a really hard thing to be in
- 01:03
high school.
- 01:05
Even Patrick’s boyfriend hated him for it.
- 01:09
And Sam is…Sam is…
- 01:11
…ahem. Well, she’s just this girl.
- 01:13
WHOM I LOVE SO MUCH I MIGHT CRY.
- 01:16
Okay… I… did cry. A few times. At first when I told her I had a crush on
- 01:22
her she said I was too young, but she was really, really nice about it.
- 01:26
She was always so nice and pretty and loving and kind and…
- 01:31
…“with boyfriend.”
- 01:33
So Patrick tried to help me find another girl. I got to go to a bunch of parties and one
- 01:38
time, everyone even did a toast to me.
- 01:41
Which I don’t even get, ‘cause all I did at those parties was watch other people make
- 01:47
out a lot. Then it turned out that there was this girl,
- 01:52
Mary Elizabeth, at those parties…and she wanted to make out …with me. We even went
- 01:58
out.
- 01:58
Me. I went out. With a real girl. A nice one, too.
- 02:04
Except then at a party I got dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room and I didn’t
- 02:09
kiss Mary Elizabeth.
- 02:10
You can guess who I kissed.
- 02:12
And then I had two girls who were very, very mad at me.
- 02:16
I think as a guy I’m supposed to get used to that.
- 02:20
So then I decided to get a different kind of girlfriend…
- 02:24
…well, she was small and green and her first name was Mary and her middle name wasn’t
- 02:29
Elizabeth…
- 02:29
She was nice I guess but I never liked her as much as Sam.
- 02:34
Eventually, Sam stopped being mad at me and she and her boyfriend got into a big fight
- 02:38
at one of the last parties of the year.
- 02:41
I was so “in.”
- 02:43
Except when Sam and I were kissing something felt weird, like there was a memory haunting
- 02:47
my body that I couldn’t recall until someone pressed against it…
- 02:52
…my aunt Helen. She was my favorite aunt. She had a really tough life and died in a
- 02:57
car accident.
- 02:59
She used to let me watch TV with her.
- 03:04
Well, and I guess she did something else to me.
- 03:07
…and I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with that.
- 03:13
And that’s how, freshman year of high school, I ended up not only watching people and reading
- 03:18
a bunch of books, but also…
- 03:20
…falling in love, breaking someone’s heart, keeping someone’s sexuality secret, getting
- 03:24
drunk, becoming a total pothead, making out with a girl I really liked, and ending up
- 03:29
in the hospital.
- 03:32
Hey, not too bad for a wallflower.
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