The movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower took a while to arrive in Singapore. When lots of people raved about it in the Philippines, I decided to read the book while waiting for it and I loved it, making me look forward to the movie.
Well it finally arrived and I got to watch it last night and I also loved it! Some stuff was different in both, obviously, but I loved them both and can’t really say which one I loved more.
The book/film is the coming of age story of a boy named Charlie who is just coming into high school, set in the 90s. He is shy and sensitive, and since his bestfriend shot himself over the summer, he is also friendless and lonely.
He is eventually taken under the wings of two seniors, stepsiblings Patrick and Sam, who show him what high school life is all about. It’s not a typical high school flick, though, because this one definitely has depth.
While I loved Emma (aka Hermione Granger) who was so so pretty, my favorite actor in this film would have to be Logan (aka Percy Jackson). I think the movie works because of Logan, who plays a very convincing introvert.
There were several times during the film when I found myself blinking back tears because I pitied him so much, like during the scene when he was sitting by himself during lunch, his eyes roaming around the cafeteria to search for a potential friend, and when he was at a school dance and standing on the sidelines, grooving to the music and obviously wanting to head out to the dance floor but was too shy to do so.
I realized that the reason I felt for him was because once upon a time, I was a wallflower like him. Shocker, huh? Most people who know me now would definitely describe me as an extrovert.
In fact, recently, after reading the book, I said that I suddenly wanted to write blogs like letters the way Charlie did in the book, starting off with “Dear Friend,” and a friend of mine reacted by saying, “But my dear, you’re not and will never be a wallflower. Helloooo!” He’s right.
But I once was. I have proof – my elementary report card. You know that portion at the back where your teacher writes comments about you? I have one that says: “Shy. Does not associate with classmates.”
That was probably not completely true. I talked to my friends, and thankfully I did have friends, but speaking in big groups unnerved me. You know that scene in the movie when the teacher asked a question and Charlie knew the answer yet didn’t raise his hand? That was me. I never spoke unless specifically called upon.
One time, one of our teachers actually spoke in class about how she had a student who was so quiet and never participated in class that she thought the kid just didn’t know anything. But then when she saw that kid’s test papers, she was surprised at how smart that kid actually was.
I remember wondering then who she could possibly be talking about. Then to my surprise, she actually named that kid, and it was me. Then everyone turned to look at me and I wanted to shrivel on the spot because I hated attention.
Another teacher of mine talked to me about my shyness. It happened when I was in sixth grade, just about to graduate. This time it was just me and the teacher, and he told me that he was sad because my grades qualified me to be at the top ten of my batch but because I had so few extracurricular activities, I could not graduate as an honorable mention. Even though I did join a few clubs (book lovers club and math club haha how nerdy!), I could not compete with batchmates who became officers for those clubs or who ran for student government and such.
When I went on to high school, I was still so shy that I wouldn’t even talk to my former elementary classmates who were no longer my classmates because I was afraid they wouldn’t talk to me. When I rode a jeepney and one of my childhood friends happened to be in there with me, I would pretend not to see them because I was afraid to talk to them.
I only started to shake of my shyness in college, when I joined an org called SALT. I only joined because I wanted to take advantage of the advanced enrollment benefits, with absolutely no idea what the org actually did.
Turns out that the org was in charge of recruiting students from different high schools to enroll in our school and that meant we had to spend a lot of time talking to whole classroomfulls of strangers. I was so nervous the first few times (elocution was my most hated part in school; I hated speaking in front of a crowd) but eventually, I got used to it and eventually, I was no longer shy.
But here’s a little secret… the old me sometimes resurfaces still, usually when I’m the only newbie thrown into a group of people who all know each other.
Like when I joined a new team this year, while everyone joked and laughed, I just quietly did my recs at my workstation.
And that time during my UBS days when I spent all my lunch breaks eating a sandwich and reading a book while sitting on a bench by myself because I didn’t have the guts to ask anyone if I could join them for lunch.
And also that time I dyed my hair bright red and turned it back to black after a week. A colleague asked me why and I explained that I hated all the attention. He was surprised, saying that he didn’t peg me as someone who hated attention.
Perhaps a part of us will always be our old selves no matter how much we’ve changed.
Some memorable lines (from the book):
We accept the love we think we deserve.
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.
So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.
There’s nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.
I am very interested and fascinated how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other.
This moment will just be another story someday.
So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.
I don’t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don’t want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me.
I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn’t change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have.
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