The Outsiders' Revenge

It's 1994. Location: Calgary, Alberta (or Anytown, North America.) Pearl Jam is huge. So is grunge (before that whole Fred Perry thing). Kurt Cobain has killed himself, thus simultaneously sending thousands of teenagers into the depths of adolescent despair and ensuring his band's place in history will be forever tied to its lead singer's tragic early death. Rock and roll loves a good tragedy.

I think I still have my dad's Rolling Stone magazine following Cobain's death. At the time I'd tacked to my bedroom wall. One fan letter that I can still recall was written by a high school student whose friend on hearing the news grabbed and tried to down an entire bottle of Aspirin. This part I can quote verbatim, "We managed to wrestle the bottle away from her. But we let her have two for her headache."

It's 2008. Location: Vancouver, BC. The Outsiders is a Writers Festival event about bullying and high school and being a misfit. Shane Koyczan is huge -- literally. He's a big guy who was once the bully's mark, but now performs his spoken word all over the world to wide acclaim. Mariko Tamaki is the author of Skim, a graphic novel for young adults. The characters include a suicide and a lesbian goth who falls for her teacher. I've been writer-crushing on Tamaki hardcore ever since I encountered the mini-version of Skim put out by Kiss Machine. Nobody writes adolescence with more accuracy, honesty, humour and raw vulnerability.

Today I'm wearing the same great-grandfather's K-Mart brand orange-and-blue plaid shirt that made up of my uniform in 1994 (along with steel-toed boots, t-shirts from the boys section at the Bay, and my dad's size-36 Levi's hanging off my hips, if you must know). This was back in the days when I was a grunge-inspired band-geek who was regularly dumped head-first into garbage bins by older boys. This behaviour was not, as some adults asserted, ‘flirting.' I'm wearing this shirt todayin homage to my own troubled youth, in homage to the perfectly troubled youths written by such rockstar writers as Koyczan and Tamaki, and because like Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, I may not be able to define irony, but I know it when I see it.

These two rock and roll misfit writers have the audience of mostly grade 10 to 12 students eating out of their hands. The kids laugh, cheer and shout, especially when Koyzcan drops the F-bomb. The Outsiders make the point in their writing and in the ensuing discussion that their own misfit adolescent years were finite. Adulthood is much longer than adolescence and we all have time to grow more comfortably into our own imperfect skin. Tamaki says you don't need to repeat the Romeo and Juliet tragedy. You can put it back on the shelf. And being a misfit is excellent preparation for a life in the creative professions.

After, both writers are literally swarmed by teens wanting autographs. One pretty blonde with glasses and braces asks Koyzcan, "I'm sure you hear this all the time, but will you marry me?"

Afterwards I catch up to a group of teenage girls walking away from the venue, curious to know what they thought about the reading, and if high school students still have to read Hinton's The Outsiders. Would they catch the reference?

These girls are smart, and confident. "That was awesome!" they say. And, "yeah Ponyboy! Sodapop! That was Tom Cruise's first movie role!"

Awesome.