My Boo Radley

Hello again,

     Very few, if any people that I know fit into my life the way Boo Radley fits into Scout's. The simple problem is, no one is mysterious enough. However, particularly in my early childhood, my geographic location was simultaneously important to my upbringing and mysterious to my 6-year-old mind, similar to Boo Radley, in a roundabout sense.

     Anyone, particularly a real estate agent, can tell you that location is terribly important to anything. And as a small child, I had some idea of where I was, similar to the fact that Scout knows that Boo Radley is probably human, and lives in a creepy old house nearby. I knew that school was twenty minutes from home, that this was a long way, and that the drive between the two involved roads, a car, and several large bridges. If you had asked me what streets and roads I was on, however, I would be clueless. Likewise, any stranger asking for directions to "east Olympia", for example, would receive a blank stare.

     I honestly don't know where my geographic knowledge, or lack thereof, came from. I knew perfectly well, after all, which street I lived on, which state I was in, and could probably point where I was on a map, if asked. Yet everything I knew was measured in a magical unit called "distance from home". In my mind, my house was the center of the universe, a point from which everything else radiated outwards. As for relations between each other, my mind grew more hazy. Once two buildings became more than a few streets apart, I had no idea.

     At the same time, my location, unbeknownst to me, was exerting great influence on my life. My school, for example, was a rather long distance from home. As a result of this, I didn't have friends over very often, as most lived closer to school. This only occurred to me long afterwards, but I realize now that a large portion of my development was affected by my geography. The most obvious shift it caused, of course, was my move significantly closer to school in order to remain inside of the school district. Although I understood the effect, the cause remained beyond my reach..


     Similarly to Scout, as I grew older, my understanding of my location increased. I began paying attention to street signs, noticing similar locations, and eventually meshing together a map of Olympia. The map was incomplete, but at least it worked. As time passed, blanks filled in, freeways popped into existence, and I became more aware of my geography. Likewise, by the end of the story, Scout knows Boo Radley not to be a bogeyman, a monster, or a murderer, but simply as a rather childlike old man who lives on her street. The unknown gradually becomes the accepted.

Thanks for listening to me ramble on,

     -Me