I Just Wanna Be Different

It never ceases to amaze me that even when I'm reading books with my students because I have to, not by my own choice, that I still get amazing and thought provoking revelations. The fourth grade is smack dab in the middle of reading, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I started the book and was grabbed immediately in the first chapter when the older sister is devising her plan to run away to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She says that she's tired of being straight A's Claudia Kincaid, the sameness of everyday, the injustice of her boring life of doing dishes. Sheesh, I broke into tears. Here is a fictional character in a kid's book making me weepy because she put into words how I have always felt for as long as I could remember. Later on in the book, she doesn't want to go home yet because she longs to be different. How I relate with Claudia. Different is distinct, its unlike the others. Its what I want to be. Not in a creepy, Goth, nobody understands me kind of way. Not even in a way anyone else can see, just on the inside. Straight A's may come easy for me, doing the dishes is something anybody with two hands and a sink can do. When I think about it I push the limits here. I just want to be different...