Anyway, I couldn't help but feel as though Twain was reaching out to me from beyond the grave via the medium of another literature enthusiast's blog. “Some people scorn a cat and think it not essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.” We, Enfields, are with you, Sam--undoubtedly, we are with you.
I was in Junior High when a teacher first introduced me to Mr. Clemens, the same year a balding football coach, through a class dubbed "Health Class," introduced me to intricacies of my then-changing body. In fifth period, we read Huck Finn aloud, several timid white children tip-toeing around the word "nigger" as though it were poison ivy or a land mine or something of that sort whilst looking in my direction to make sure the ethnic half of me hadn't taken offense, and in sixth, we watched a fifteen minute illustrating both the birds and the bees in unwanted detail, which was I how I saw the first vagina I'd ever see, crowning head and all. I had already developed a self-consciousness about my weight and my plump, perpetually-dry lips and my clammy, perpetually-moist palms. I tried to hold hands with the girl who had asked for my help on the Huck Finn paper, but she was not a fan of the nervous sweat dripping from our shared grasp.
