Post by lordmalachite on Jun 20, 2017 11:28:43 GMT
To contribute to the "Year Of Ginger" that Old School Lane is so awesomely giving us with their weekly podcast, I thought I'd take up the pen when the mood strikes me and try to reconnect with one of my favorite animated characters of all time.
Without getting into a super-lengthy backstory, let's just leave it to say that I have been a resident of Connecticut my entire life, and like Ginger I really enjoy writing. Of course, she's probably better at it than I am. I've done a lot of writing in her voice, but this is the first time I have attempted to write in Ginger's character in a good five years or so. This is rusty and not up to my usual standards, but sometimes it's best to put stuff out there. I will endeavor to keep going as the series goes on (I'd hate to spoil anything so I'll do my best not to reveal future events of the series). If anyone likes this sort of thing, please comment, and if not, well, that's okay too.
I love you all over at OSL for doing your analyses of the series and hope it brings you joy each week!
--Lord Malachite
Hello, Strangers! By Ginger Foutley
That had been the summer that changed things. It wasn't the last time that I would return to Camp Caprice, but it was the last time I would really be there as a child. I started to become a woman over the course of that summer. Not in any kind of social or sexual way. What I mean is, I began to become myself. The me that I am today, is someone I can recognize shades of in the Ginger that left Camp Caprice after that long, hot summer full of ups and downs, triumphs and disasters.
And Courtney, of course. Taking a stand for what I believed in that year, even though it nearly got my friends and I permanently banned from the campground, made me realize how much I had grown. That I was becoming smart enough and bold enough to question authority. Not out of perpetual mistrust, but because I was no longer willing to accept everything at face value. It was a profound knowledge that had always been there and that I had at least grown into--that there are two sides to every story.
Suddenly, that rift that had been developing between Dodie and myself didn't seem so insurmountable. I mean, if Courtney Gripling could make it through summer without her usual lifestyle, what excuse did the rest of us have from holding back to be all that we could be? Sometimes a lesson comes from the most unlikely of places. And though the summer would soon give way to one more year of Junior High School, I had resolved to meet it the only way I knew how--as myself.
When i look back at my childhood, and all of its wonder and horror and good old-fashioned life experience, I know it was real. And I never want to hide the scars I got along the way. Some were handed to me by life, some were wounds left by others, and the remainder are the self-inflicted kind. Each of them has a story, but each of them made me who I am. My beutiful, wonderful, frightening, amazing, tearful, joyous, stupid little life. The times we'll never forget, and the times we want to.
Any day now, that last schoolbell will ring, sending our nation's future swerving into the largest block of free time they get each year. Even when I was in high school, it was amazing how the summer seemed to stretch on forever, and also be over so quickly. It's funny how when you're an adult, the summer just is. It passes like any other season. But you have only to look out your window to see just a tiny piece of the magic that permeated your childhood. That time of year when anything could happen, and very well did. From the shores of Lake Caprice, to starting a vampire cleaning service, to learning how to make it on your own. Every summer has a story. We need only to allow ourselves to remember those halcyon times when we took ourselves less seriously. Let those memories come to you unbidden. They're a part of you, after all.
As for yours truly, I'm going outside to catch a few fireflies. You'll know me if you see me. I'll be the barefooted redhead, twenty-one going on twelve.
