Required Reading

I’m so glad I found this on the shelf. I’ve been wondering…

…Jem broke his arm at age thirteen and we had a neighbor who never came out of his house.

Who is this girl? Or boy, or whatever.

…Jem and I befriended a boy named Dill who visited Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer.

Great, a story about children.

…We were all really scared of our reclusive neighbor.

This is so creepy. I like it.

…Nobody in Maycomb would talk about our neighbor, and we children would fantasize about him and try to lure him out of his house.

This is making me uncomfortable. Why do they have to be children?

…The neighbor started leaving us little presents in a tree outside his house.

He’s luring them into his house. I get it.

…The neighbor made gestures of affection toward us children, but never appeared in person.

Whoa—I may need to cough up a hairball.

…Our dad was a lawyer, and he defended an African American man falsely accused of raping a young Caucasian American woman.

I see where this is going, I guess. Oh—the Great Depression—right.

…The father of the woman was racist and evil. The woman evidently made sexual advances toward the falsely accused rapist and lied about it. But the court still convicted the African American man. He was shot.

Ugh—the south.

…The racist father attacked Jem and me. That’s when Jem broke his arm. Our reclusive neighbor came to the rescue, took care of the racist father and carried us home.

I did not see that coming. Maybe I did.

…The neighbor disappeared again. I wondered what life would be like from his perspective. We should have repaid him for all the gifts.

Enough about the gifts. What about the bird killing instructions?

…The End.

Wait, so, when were you going to explain how to kill birds? Seriously?