Reading Frindle.

As I'm sure you're aware, (and if you are not aware, you soon will be), I am home for a 2.5-week vacation before summer classes start up.  Being in the realm of my childhood, I have access to every possession and relic of my past that hasn't been thrown away or donated yet.  Stepping into my room is like stepping into the past, frozen in time.  You never really know what you'll find in there.

Last night, I found Frindle.

Since blogger was down, I opted for some extra reading time.  I've been leisurely reading Pride and Prejudice on and off for about a month, but I'd left it downstairs in my backpack and didn't fancy journeying below to find it.  My one-floor apartment has clearly spoiled me, and turned me against stairs.  Besides, there are some nights were Jane Austen-esque English isn't calling out to one's tired mind, and last night was one of those nights.  So, instead, I started poking around the bookshelf in my room, to see what I could find.

Let me introduce you to my adolescent-era bookshelf.  It's a nondescript white thing with three shelfs, with the top shelf buckled in from the weight of the books sitting on top of it.  Top shelf: Classic literature, alphabetized by author (what of it?).  Here you'll find your Jane Austens, your Mark Twains, your William Shakespeares, etc.  There is also currently a large stack of foreign books from my French Lit class last year occupying the front part of the shelf, along with a pocket German dictionary.  On the middle shelf, you have your oversized souvenir/coffee table books, a small "non-fiction" section, and a collection of children's/young adult novels.  The non-fiction and the fiction are separated by a giant jar of seashells, with a ceramic rendition of Aladdin and Jasmin on the flying carpet and a heavy gold metal teddy bear chilling alongside the books.  The bottom shelf is reserved for scrapbooks, yearbooks, old CDs, and the three editions of Who's Who Among American High School Students books that we thought were necessary to own.  Go figure.

As its title might suggest, Frindle was found peeking out on the middle shelf, amid the children's novels.  I remembered that I loved Frindle as a kid, so I took the book off the shelf, and plopped down on my old twin-sized bed to read it.

For those of you not familiar with Frindle, let me give you a quick plot synopsis: Nick Allen, a fifth grade student, is one of those kids who is particularly good at distracting teachers and derailing their lesson plans enough to get through class with no homework assigned.  One day, to stall for time, he asks his English teacher where words comes from, but instead of distracting her, the teacher gives him an assignment to report on the dictionary (which the teacher loves to the point of worship).  After creating his report, Nick decides to make up a new word: frindle.  By doing so, Nick wants to prove to his teacher that words are silly, and that even words that aren't in the dictionary can be as important as "real" words.  He and his friends take the following oath: "From this day on and forever, I will never use the word 'pen' again.  Instead, I will use the word 'frindle,' and will do everything possible so others will, too."

What unfolds is a "war of the words" between pen and frindle, with teachers on one side and students on the other.  Eventually, the frindle affair catches media attention and catches the eye of product designers, and the word becomes more and more commonly used until, ten years later, Nick's made-up word winds up in the dictionary.  It is at this point that Nick's fifth-grade teacher, the most anti-frindle of all, reveals in a ten-year old letter that she was rooting for frindle all along, and knew that her opposition to it would be the best aid in continuing its usage.  It really is quite the clever story.

Reading Frindle last night, I was kind of amazed by it.  I have this semi-secret ambition to be a published author (or at least, to write things that people will read, such as this blog), and I think it's awesome how Andrew Clements (the author) packed such important themes into such a simple story.  I last read Frindle sometime around 1997 - the author had signed my copy of the book on that date, lending me the assumption that I received the book that Christmas from my grandmother, who always had some signed children's book on hand to give as a gift at Christmas to me or my sister.  In 1997, I liked Frindle because it was a fun story about words, and about a teacher and a student who were against each other and became friends.  Now, fourteen years later, I like Frindle because it shows how one person, one action, one small idea can change the world.

When you're a kid, you kind of believe that you'll change the world one day.  At every graduation you encounter, this idea is reinforced, and it's not until you spread your wings and fly headfirst into that post-graduation brick wall that you realize that changing the world is harder than you think it is.  I think this is primarily because, out in the real world, you start to realize just how small you actually are.  I don't mean small physically, I mean small compared to society, to the world, to the universe.  The voices that matter are the presidents and the celebrities of the world, and if you are neither a president nor a celebrity, and you spend most of your time in places where no one knows your name, effecting actual change becomes quite the daunting task.  The big ideas of childhood get packed away in boxes while you deal with the day-to-day of "grown-up" life.  When you start that new chapter of your life, away from family familiarities and college victories, and you become just so-and-so of apartment #238475, the weight of commonality starts to press on you, until by feeling like "one of the crowd" you start to lose sight of that individuality that once caused you to dream.  

Who are YOU to change the world?

What can YOU possibly do?

You're JUST a person.

Nothing great is going to come of YOU.

Might as well give up now.

But then, there's Frindle: a story that reminds us that even the most silly of ideas, if taken under the right circumstances and leadership, and with the right dedication and integrity, can actually change things. The unusual can become usual, until people forget that the thing was ever unusual in the first place.  

This was the other interesting idea put forth by Frindle: that even the normal things were made up by somebody, at some point, and they only seem normal because we decided they would be normal.  Take this conversation between Nick and his teacher, Mrs. Granger: 

"Nick swallowed hard, but he said, 'I don't think there's anything wrong with it.  It's just fun, and it really is a real word.  It's not a bad word, just different.  And besides, it's how words really change, isn't it?  That's what you said.'  

Mrs. Granger sighed.  'It is how a word could be made up brand new, I suppose, but the word pen?  Should it really be replaced by...by that other word?  The word pen has a long, rich history.  It comes from the Latin word for feather, pinna.  It started to become our word for pen because quills made from feathers were some of the first writing tools ever made.  It's a word that comes from somewhere.  It makes sense, Nicholas.'

'But frindle makes just as much sense to me,' said Nick.  'And after all, didn't somebody just make up the word pinna, too?"

What sorts of things might we consider normal that are ripe for change, even if we may not realize it?  Who is to say what is normal anyway?  Who decided that a pen would be called a pen, and not called a frindle?

It's amazing to me how often we willingly try to live up to certain standards of "normalcy" in our lives, whether through beauty or fitness or education or occupation or salary or anything else.  Do we even know where these standards came from?  Who got to decide what would be normal, and what would not be?  Why can't these things be changed?  Moreover, why can't we change what is normal?

Quite a lot to think about, coming from a children's book.

Sometimes, all it takes is one person who decides to make a change.  One person, who has the leadership charisma to make others follow, and encounters the opposition necessary to make others take notice.  One idea that catches on, spreading from one person to the next.  All it takes is one.   

So let's all go out there and change the world...one frindle at a time.