"Growing Pains" by Cole Parker

[Camy]

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Trip: "I hadn’t known Slovenia and Slovakia were two different countries. But I learned that the former had been part of Yugoslavia, and Slovakia had been part of Czechoslovakia."

What's more important is the why and when...

The Balkan conflict, which was just as bad as the second world war, included shudderingly horrific ethnic cleansing.

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Beginning in 1991, political upheavals in Bosnia and Herzegovina displaced about 2.7 million people by mid-1992, of which over 700,000 sought asylum in other European countries,  making it the largest exodus in Europe since World War II. It is estimated between 1.0 and 1.3 million people were uprooted in these ethnic cleansing campaigns, and that tens of thousands were killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_in_the_Bosnian_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide

[Cole Parker]

Yikes!  War seems to pervade human history.  Nationalism and religion may be two of the most prevalent reasons.  We seem unable to stop it.

C

[Rutabaga]

Some broader insight into the inherent instability of Yugoslavia can be seen in this article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia.  It was cobbled together in the aftermath of World War I from remnants of the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungary, and this arranged marriage of disparate peoples never flourished as such.  

R

[Rutabaga]

But it was time to put on my big-boy shorts.

There's an expression I haven't heard for a long time.

R

[Camy]

It's rough when you find out the one you've set your sights on bats for another team.

2 hours ago, Rutabaga said:

But it was time to put on my big-boy shorts.

There's an expression I haven't heard for a long time.

Nor me.  Is it from 'Historical Sayings - volume 3' ?

[Merkin]

If you're going to read Cole Parker's writings you are going to have to get used to these expressions from the distant past.  I don't think he's even aware that he's doing it.  Thank goodness his spelling has improved and it no longer looks like Geoffrey Chaucer's.
 

[Rutabaga]

As I recall, the version I heard was "It's time to put on your big-boy britches."

R

 

[Cole Parker]

3 hours ago, Merkin said:

If you're going to read Cole Parker's writings you are going to have to get used to these expressions from the distant past. 
 

Of course I know that I'm keeping the language of my youth alive and well by using it.  I usually grin when I write one down.  Hey, someone has to do it!  We weren't only colorful back then, you could actually understand what the expressions meant.  Today?  Not so much, and it gets worse every year.  I could list a dozen or so expressions or words that are meaningless to me, but I can't remember them!  Things like 'woke' and 'gaslighting' and 'ghosting' and, well, that's enough.  It's already making me sad.

C

[James K]

There are no stories by young writers so like reading Dickens, the stories are set in the past, mostly the last century. Sounds old, but it's just twenty or so years ago, although that is a lifetime if you're young! I think it would be hard to write today's world for teenage protanganists unless you are young and surrounded by it. I like stories set in their historical times. For something from today, well, I'm reading Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa, very much now, obvious by both the style and vocabulary.

For style, it uses present tense, for vocabulary, it's routed in Spanish American, something you never get from American writers here. That is not a criticism, but an observation. What are the author profiles? Middle class white American grew up in the 1980's or 90's? Impossible to know, there are no author bios, nothing is given on that count. There are the British writers, obvious by the language and settings, but we (the readers) really know little about the authors.

It is not to say you (the author) need give your life story, but maybe a little background. Like Jonny Garza Villa who opens his book with an intro. "I want you to know that in the hundreds of pages that comprise this book, there is a lot of joy. So much. It is a journey of figuring out how to embrace who you are and of unexpected love, a celebration of those who adore and accept every part of us, and, if I can be so bold for a second, pretty fucking funny."

"Many scenes in this book triggered deep, emotional reactions, both while writing and still when I go back and read. This story is more personal than I ever could have envisioned when I first started drafting, and much of it I’d never taken the time to process before. I say all this not to diminish the beauty of the aforementioned joy you will find here but to acknowledge the reality that for queer people of color, for queer Latinxs, Chicanxs, Mexican Americans, joy is very much tied to trauma. Two sides of the coin that is our lives. So, as the writer of the words that form this journey, I ask you to do me a favor and check in with yourself before starting. And I want you to know that it’s okay if you’re not ready for this book yet. It’s okay if you never are. No hard feelings. Te lo prometo y te quiero."

If you want to read a young guy's today's world from a Latin American POV with the language, you could do worse than picking up this book.

 

 

[Camy]

16 hours ago, James K said:

I think it would be hard to write today's world for teenage protanganists unless you are young and surrounded by it.

I'd have to agree. Write what you know - and extrapolate from it is my niche: Very 20th century. So sorry.

Now, there is a generation that has always had smart technology, and can't conceive what it was like without it. I, for my sins, remember telephone boxes.

16 hours ago, James K said:

There are the British writers, obvious by the language and settings, but we (the readers) really know little about the authors.

Why do you want to know about the authors, James? What difference does it make to the stories they tell? Either you enjoy them or you don't. It doesn't matter if they're a 300lb transvestite living in Ashby-de-la-Zouch and one finger typing, or a twink of twinks.
The story is the thing... though (and this is a secret), I can say I'm a very cute Emu.

Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa - Amazon UK

Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa - Amazon Com

 

Apologies to Cole for this outrageous thread hijack.
Regular service is now resumed.

 

[James K]

Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa

Borrow it free from the electric library.

@Camy I don't really want to know personal details about the authors, but something about why, how, the background to writing a story, might be good. It was Jonny Garza Villa's intro that made me persevere through the Spanish American and read the story. I haven't finished yet, but the book certainly gives a different POV. 

And... telephone boxes are good... I've watched Dr Who!

Thread hijacking... happens all the time... If it's interesting to talk about something... why not? What was this thread about anyway - LOL 😁

[Rutabaga]

We were talking about the fertile (or febrile) brain of Cole . . . 
 

R

[Camy]

16 hours ago, James K said:

And... telephone boxes are good... I've watched Dr Who!

Sorry to disappoint, but the Tardis is a Police box. Telephone boxes are red.

 

3 hours ago, Rutabaga said:

We were talking about the fertile (or febrile) brain of Cole . . . 

Yes we were, and we will. Brains are good... a zombie told me. I had one once - a brain, not a zombie. I'll go now.

[Camy]

Chapter 11...

Awww. I predict:

Trip and James sitting up a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

[Rutabaga]

What if Jason and James find each other?

R

[Rutabaga]

Possible James Lowery.

 

[Cole Parker]

He looks like he's 12 to me.

[Rutabaga]

8 minutes ago, Cole Parker said:

He looks like he's 12 to me.

Isn’t that plausible for seventh grade?

R

[Cole Parker]

Yes

[Rutabaga]

Ready for Thanksgiving. 
 

 

R

[Camy]

We don't have Thanksgiving here, primarily because our turkeys have a hard enough time as it is, with Christmas. Adding Thanksgiving to their calendar would be a step too far.

I am looking forward to meeting Tanner's dad - who might well require horsewhipping, himself.

 

[Rutabaga]

So Trip's school newspaper column is entitled "Growing Pains."  What a coincidence!

I don't have a picture to offer for Tanner's dad, Justin.  Pick your favorite from ESPN or wherever.  Maybe Chris Berman.

Honestly, the marriage to Tanner's step-mom doesn't amount to much if Justin is gone all the time and all this bad stuff goes on without his knowledge,  Both Justin and Tanner need to bail out.

R 

[Camy]

I'm very peeved @Cole Parker

I think the following should come with a 'don't read this if you're hungry' warning!

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The turkey was huge, over twenty pounds, and roasted to a rich, hickory brown. Dad carved, and quickly we were all tucking in.

And this part just takes the biscuit!

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We did our best to reduce the table’s load, and the dinner ended up with us groaning instead of the table.

And the ending! It reminds me of Saturday morning kids' films, at the local cinema. They'd always play a part of a serial that meant you had to come back next week... Arghhhhh.

[Cole Parker]

1 hour ago, Camy said:

 It reminds me of Saturday morning kids' films, at the local cinema. They'd always play a part of a serial that meant you had to come back next week... Arghhhhh.

Did they still have those when you were young?  I went to the kids' matinees. which cost a dime, and saw those serials.  Guys like Lash Larue and Hopalong Cassidy starred.  But I'd have guessed those serials were out of fashion by the time you were allowed out of the house on your own. I'm talking about the 1950s here, back in my youth.

C

[Rutabaga]

I think the theater admission had skyrocketed up to 35 cents when I went on Saturday mornings. 
 

R