One hundred twenty-seven days before it happens, Miles learns just how brutal the pranks at Culver Creek can be. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska.
one hundred twenty-seven days before
Green is still introducing me to a lot of the world of this book, but he doesn’t seem interested in doing so slowly, and I like how quickly one scene moves into the next. I know that I am already comparing this to college when it’s not what this is, but it’s the only thing I have in my life that feels comparable. Miles is uprooted by Culver Creek. Sometimes it is negative. Sometimes it’s positive. All of it is wholly unlike his life at home in Florida, and that’s what Green successfully conveys here.
One of the biggest things I had to adapt to when I went to college was my relationship with food. Green introduces a fairly small detail here at the beginning of this chapter that made me smile with recognition: bufriedo day. My school didn’t have a bufriedo, but I sure ate enough of them growing up. There are few joys in the world quite like eating a fried burriot. What I found so recognizable about this detail is that I distinctly recall being overwhelmed by eating food that wasn’t prepared by my own mother. Even though I’d been living on my own for two years by the time I started my freshman year of college, I’d had enough time under her roof to become accustomed to the style of food she cooked. We were, for the majority of time I was a child, a very poor family, and my parents made-do with what they had. Having to feed three mouths, that meant my mother had to find food that was not only inexpensive, but possessed enough calories to feed two teenagers who ran cross country and track and a younger daughter who was, infuriatingly so, goddamned picky about the food she ate. A lot of what we ate was fatty, fried, high in a million things that were terrible for you, but she managed. You don’t have the luxury to cook whatever you want when you’re on a limited income.
I actually lost weight the last two years of high school once I was living on my own. Food wasn’t as regular all the time, and having to pay rent, buy my own food, and pay for all the school shit I needed meant that sometimes I rationalized skipping meals. I scavenged a lot at friends’ houses, hoping I could pop in for a meal or two when I needed it. I graduated high school barely reaching 140 pounds on a good day. I had muscular legs from running so much, but I couldn’t seem to keep weight on my frame anywhere else.
When I got to college, I heard other students who weren’t freshman warning us of the “Freshman Fifteen.” Those who lived in the dorms and had access to “free” food in a buffet style in the cafeteria, combined with a more sedentary lifestyle from studying, generally found themselves gaining weight over the course of the year. This, for me, was a gross understatement. Despite that I still ran cross country and maintained a physical routine to my week, I grew three inches in height and, over the course of a single year, gained fifty pounds. Suddenly, the frame I had before that was skinny as a rail, the one that used to have muscle tone simply by the sheer fact that I had nothing to hide what little muscle I did have, was plump. And you know what did it?
Bufriedo Day. We didn’t have one. Instead, we had Taco Tuesdays. Sometimes, on Fridays, there’d be four to five different types of pizza at lunch and dinner. I was a fiend for vegetables and always had been and I’d use the giant cereal bowls to craft complex and weighty “salad” constructions, things of abstract art and a swirl of colors, all drowned in whatever new dressing I wanted to have. For the first time in my entire life, I had more food available to me than ever before. I could choose what I wanted, when I wanted, and eat however much I desired. I lost count in the first few months of the number of times I ate myself into some sort of food stupor, unable to do much but shuffle distractedly back to my dorm. It didn’t matter that I was running five-to-ten miles every morning, six days a week. My body suddenly discovered a new source of energy and sustenance, and I exploded upwards and outwards. It took me coming home for Thanksgiving that first year for me to realize that my whole body type had changed, so much so that I told my parents I desperately needed new outfits (plural) because I was rapidly growing out of them.
I know I’m now getting ridiculously off the point of all this, but I couldn’t help but think about how this one small detail just totally gets it. I wonder, then, if Miles will experience a large weight gain by the end of the school year after eating so many bufriedos and plates of fried okra. (Okra…mmmmmm.)
The second portion of the one hundred twenty-seventh day before something concerns itself with two things: the unpredictability of school life, and pranking gone just a bit too far. I think, that is. Miles plans a lot that first night before classes, and I remember doing the same thing. I also remember waking up much earlier than I liked, getting lost (WHY IS YOUR GODDAMN CAMPUS SO GIGANTIC, CAL STATE LONG BEACH), and then sitting in the wrong class for forty-five minutes before realizing it. You just…well, you just can’t plan all too much in that environment. In Miles’s case, though, something deeply unexpected happens that confused even me.
I woke up completely and instantly, sitting up straight in bed, terrified, and I couldn’t understand the voices for some reason, couldn’t understand why there were any voices at all, and what the hell time was it anyway? And finally my head cleared enough to hear, “C’mon, kid. Don’t make us kick your ass. Just get up,” and then from the top bunk, I heard, “Christ, Pudge. Just get up.” So I got up, and saw for the first time three shadowy figures. Two of them grabbed me, one with a hand on each of my upper arms, and walked me out of the room. On the way out, the Colonel mumbled, “Have a good time. Go easy on him, Kevin.”
Ah, so there’s that name. Kevin. And clearly this was some sort of introductory hazing period, and, as a new student, Miles was subject. I’m personally not a big fan of this at all, but I come from a background of being bullied. What happens to Miles treads far too close to being unbelievably cruel, and I recalled being duck-taped to a pole in the quad at school when I was a freshman in high school. As they duck-taped Miles’s arms and legs together, I thought, “They’ll just leave him on the edge of the water, right?”
I said, “Please guys, don’t,” just before they taped my mouth shut. Then they picked me up and hurled me into the water.
um. UH. SO. THAT IS LIKE….wait YOU TAPED HIS ARMS AND LEGS TOGETHER AND THEN THREW HIM IN A BODY OF WATER. And if that at all confused me and bewildered me, then I was flat out lost by Miles’s reaction. Thankfully, his body is buoyant–MINE VERY MUCH IS NOT–but he doesn’t seem to panic once. Not at all. I was taken aback by this. Why isn’t he freaking out at what pretty much amounts to those three dudes nearly killing him? Well, to be fair, he was thinking things like this:
If I tilted my head too much, I felt my whole body start to roll, and on the long list of unpleasant ways to die, “facedown in soaking-wet white boxers” is pretty high up there.
Bless this man. These are the thoughts I think as well.
After he manages to get out of the lake, he makes the mistake of visiting Alaska first, thinking it’ll offset the embarrassment of seeing the Colonel. But she isn’t exactly friendly to him, and she heavily implies that not only did she know about him being thrown into the lake, but that she really could not care less about it. Defeated, he goes back to his own room and the Colonel is genuinely surprised it took so long to come back. When he explains why, I suddenly understood why Miles reacted the way he did to being thrown in the lake: he expected it. The Colonel, however, did not. Miles thought this was just how things went. Sure, he’s mystified as to why Kevin and his friends (and Alaska, by that qualification) are so irritated with him, but the hazing? He has already accepted it as a Thing That Will Happen at Culver Creek.
The Colonel, however, is not so ready to just accept things.
“Well, maybe I should just go to the Eagle tomorrow and tell him,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” he answered. He walked over to his crumpled shorts lying on the floor and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit two and handed one to me. I smoked the whole goddamned thing. “You’re not,” he continued, “because that’s not how shit gets dealt with here. And besides, you really don’t want to get a reputation for ratting. But we will deal with those bastards, Pudge. I promise you. They will regret messing with one of my friends.”
Ah, I think I see what’s going on. Is this the start of a prank war? Is this how the “prank” referred to in the opening comes about? An escalation of one devious act after another? I love a good prank war, and I’m intrigued to see what will lead them to that point.
I have never ever tried a bufriedo. I need to now.
I had a similar experience when I went to a summer class at Indiana University. We got meal cards for the three weeks that we were there. They were actually free, the whole class just about was. Anyway, there I was, 17 years old, on the chubby side, and with $300 dollars of food at my disposal. I must have gained 10 pounds over 3 weeks.
See? I was right. The Colonel is great. He's going to get revenge!
Okay, so, I have some very burning questions;
1). Is a bufriedo a fried burrito? That sounds really good. And even if it isn't, the descriptions have made me wish to eat one.
2). Okay, fried okra. I've heard of it. I think it is a vegetable, and that it is fried. But….I mean, what type of vegetable? What colour? Is it similar to a potato? I have no idea here, guys.
You know, I've got to say, this prank here was just so, surprising. I can't help but wonder why the Colonel just let those guys into the room. Is it a genuinely accepted method for everyone to have that happen to them? Its just so…weird. I just don't get hazing, I suppose.
But god, being thrown into the water with your mouth, arms and legs taped together? That's scary. I mean, I'm a pretty confident swimmer (I scuba dive), so I would probably be okay- but the thing about water, is it doesn't act in a normal way. All it takes is being thrown in the wrong way, or not having your lungs full of air to keep you bouyant or something, and it can be dangerous. I get this no 'tattling' thing (although the concept has always seemed trather juvenile) but I pull the line at when it becomes life threatening.
Are….all high schools (day and baording schools) this bad in the US? Because its seems every depiction of American school life is this exaggerated, and I can't tell what's fiction or fact.
A bufriedo is a deep-fried burrito. I don't know why they aren't being called chimichangas here (which is the only term I've ever heard for them before this). My elementary school served the pre-packaged kind (not crispy, but you can taste the layer of oil on the tortilla) with a stick of cheese that tasted like some kind of cheddar-Velveeta hybrid where it's obvious that the Velveeta has more dominant genes.
Okra is actually a fleshy seed pod. Here's a picture of the pods still on the okra plants. I had some growing in my backyard this year. They died back a while ago, and I keep forgetting not to touch the plant stems and end up with fingers full of tiny white spines. =/ Aside from deep-frying, they're pretty good in stews (where the sliminess is less of an issue) or roasted (which tastes like they do deep-fried, but without the breading and oil).
The lake thing is really scary to me, too. I think it's extremely dangerous even if the kids' limbs aren't incapacitated at the time. Even beside the dangers you mentioned: surely there are people who go to that school who never learned how to swim? I'm guessing from the whole Weekday Warriors thing that the people who go there would tend to be pretty rich, which would tend to skew things, but still. Apparently no one can be bothered to ask the person about that just before they get chucked into a semi-large body of water. And if this is actually happening to every new student for years on end, I think it's pretty unlikely (unless they're completely negligent/incompetent) that none of the adults at the school have ever found out about this.
I read the book about half a year ago and really quickly (I had to give it back to my friend xD), so I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I don't think the Colonel expected them to tape his arms and legs together …
Yeah, I gathered that…but I can't imagine why he'd let people he doesn't like just grab his new roomate, to dump him in the water anyways. Seems so random.
I think it's just an initiation thing, something that all new kids go through, and it's like "okay, now you've had this thing happen to you, so you're One Of Us now." It's supposed to be embarrassing, but not life-threatening.
I remember having to explain to a friend of mine from California what okra was and why she should try it.
Okra is the seed-pod of an okra plant, which is in the mallow family (the Swamp Mallow is my favorite, because I'd always call them Marsh Mallows as a kid, thinking I was clever >_>). It's a staple in southern food, and is one of the factors that differentiates gumbo from jambalaya. Gumbo has okra, and jambalaya does not. ^_^
Fried, it is deliciousness. Boiled, it is… kind of slimy and bleh.
People in different parts of the world — nay, of America — don't know what fried okra is?
Like I understand never having tried it due to it being regional but NEVER HEARD OF IT.
Gosh.
This is sad-making.
I only know about okra because a friend who grew up in Idaho brought us some pickled okra once.
Otherwise I would probably never have encountered it.
Was I the only one who came here yesterday expecting a review and much much later realised it was Thanksgiving in the USA? For me it was Mourn Freddie Mercury Day, maybe that's why I totally forgot.
Anyway, I was irrationally terrified when they took Miles to the lake. I don't know, I don't like the idea of pranks, even though I've never experienced one myself. I don't see the point of initiation or whatever it is. It's humiliating and horrible and I don't like it. But then they taped his arms and legs and mouth and hey, that's not a normal prank. I hope they get revenge.
I was kind of angry at Alaska's reaction. She didn't even give him time to explain what had happened to him. I get it that she thought they were only throwing him in the lake as per custom, not that they were taping him, but still. Not cool.
Anyway, now I can finally read the next chapter! I don't know how I managed to refrain myself yesterday.
Oh, right. That's why. I keep forgetting that Thanksgiving is later for your Americans. (Although I shouldn't. Its plastered all over the web. XD)
Oooooooooh…yeah, ok, now it makes sense why there was no review yesterday. I totally forgot it was American Thanksgiving. Well not entirely as yes it was on the news and such but yeah…totally normal day for us here in the great white north who had our Thanksgiving 6 weeks ago. I was actually somewhat worried for Mark when there was no review!
I actually worried for a few hours until I remembered. what am i doing with my life.
I kind of had the opposite experience my first semester of college: my dorm hall was the newest/nicest on campus, but it was also the farthest away from things like the classes buildings and the cafeteria, plus this being West Virginia, it was down this huge hill that you had to walk up. This coincided with one of the worst winters we'd had in recent memory, and to be perfectly honest, just the thought of going out and climbing up that hill in all that slippery snow, knowing how clumsy I am and thus prone to constantly falling down, was enough to keep me toasty warm in my dorm. Consequently, I failed half my classes by virtue of just never going, and considered myself over-fed if I managed to eat once a day. I dropped weight like it was going out of style.
I'm always…in awe, I guess, when I read stories like this where the characters become involved with the "scene" or whatever you want to call it that's around them when they arrive in a new place. I'm such a keep-to-myself person that the idea of chatting with other students at lunch or getting involved in a prank war (however unwillingly Miles has had it thrust upon him), it's confusing and foreign but so interesting to me.
I can't wait to read the next chapter although it's going to be a struggle to stop myself from just devouring the entire thing in one go, to be honest.
I'm thinking that if I were Pudge, I would have ratted. I don't think that I even would have hesitated.
"They will regret messing with one of my friends."
The first time I got all kinds of emo while reading this book. (There are MANY MORE times ahead, lawsy.) All I could think was, "…my friends." Pudge has a friend, ready and willing to avenge him. BLESS.
Oh, good news, kids. John Green read the second chapter of his new book that's coming out in January (all pre-orders will be signed) on his youtube channel.
And we heard that it was good.
Gosh, who am I kidding, good is such an understatement… I, for one, loved it and cannot wait for January!
Will ALL pre-orders be signed?
Well, that's convinced me to order it.
I don't know how you're reading this one bit at a time. I read this book in one night, right after I bought it. I was visiting my best friend and I stayed up until 4 or 5 in the morning reading this book. I was totally useless the next day.
Pranks are weird, I don't like them… especially when they turn out life threatening 😀
I'm still quite excited to see where this book is taking us, I like how it builds up to something, but it still quite unclear what it is… keeps me on my toes! 🙂
My mum calls okra 'ladies fingers'. Just wanted to share that!
I forgot that it was Turkey day in the US and was very disappointed when there wasn't a new chapter up. 🙂 Ah, well.
Oh, man, the hazing. I'm so glad to say that I've never experienced anything like hazing or bullying. Especially not in the extreme form that I've seen in movies or read about in books. Where I'm from it's much less common.
The only time I came even remotely close to being bullied (more like very harshly verbally assaulted for being from a certain country) was when I lived in America for two years. It sort of tainted my view of America, which is sad because it's such a beautiful country.
I agree with the people who cannot believe you're able to read this one chapter at a time. I read it the day I got it.
Oh my god, Mark. This will be painful for me to read. I know it's a short book but even then, you going chapter by chapter might kill me. I absolutly DO NOT want to spoil you, but Mark… YOU ARE NOT PREPARED. I wish I could say more about it, I'm dying to, but I was spoiled before reading this book and I don't want that to happen to anyone else. Just… hold on and try to prepare yourself.
The idea that so many kids seem to have of "no tattling" really pisses me off. If this had happened to me or anyone I know, I would have called the cops.
I don't know if anyone here has ever experienced initiations. When I was in college, I was on a team sport that did initiations; there was nothing dangerous about them, it was mostly just the older students getting you to do silly stuff. Before college, I never understood why anyone would participate in initiations – I heard about them in the news and they always seemed so dangerous. I definitely look down upon hazing that endangers the people involved. However, I get why people do it now. After an initiation, there's this odd feeling of camaraderie that didn't exist before. It's like, "wow, I'm a full member now. I'm one of you guys." The problem is when an initiation crosses a line, and that's what happened with Miles. I'm also just not a fan of the sneak attack in general :/
I agree with you. If someone tries to murder me, then I'm going to tell on them.
Apropos of nothing, but for some reason as I'm reading you cover these first few chapters of Looking for Alaska, I'm getting a real Holes vibe that I didn't get when I actually read this book myself.
Holes is a good book by the way, you should totally read it if you haven't already. And then see the movie. That story was my childhood.
Holes really is the rare movie-of-a-book that not only doesn't suck, but is actively good.
I love the movie. It's a lot of the reason why I don't find Shia LaBeouf annoying, since I was first exposed to him in it and he actually does a really good job.