Same River Twice pg 9-53

I find the narrator in the story to be very naive and innocent. He lived a shelter life, he wasn't exposed to the rest of the world in Kentucky. He even says he never crossed his own county line. I think one of the funniest parts of the section was when he couldn't tell the difference between Hispanics and African Americans in a laundromat he confused Spanish to be Ebonics or a African American dialect of English. I knew those two differences by at least first grade and the narrator is 18-19 in that section. He is learning about the real world, experiencing it for the first time making mistakes and learning from them.

I see the narrator being very human too. He is deathly scared of having a baby with Rita. He is afraid of change, of growing old. He feels like if he has a kid that some switch will flip and he will become an old man and change forever. Which is true, having a child does change a person. I draw some similarity with my transition to college. Senior year everything was stable i knew the routine of high school and sports and family living with my parents, college posed a big change, different class styles harder classes, living away from home away from my family and friends. I feel like I have changed as well being released to the rest of the world seeing and learning new things everyday.

I think it would be cool to throw caution to the wind and just live where ever I want doing what ever I want like the narrator does. Get a job make friends, if I get tired of it just move on to the next city, job, and friends. It might seem lonely at times but the freedom seems very enticing to try and make it out on your own where ever you want. It is sort of like the American dream, to go out into the cold dark world and make it by yourself, make a living have fun and do whatever you want.

A few parts I was really taken a back by. When he mistakes a hermaphrodite to be a hooker, that part really caught me off guard and I had to cringe about how awful that experience had to be. The horse riding part also was pretty crazy and the fact that Jahi was crazy enough to want to have sex after such a traumatic event. I really am sketched out by the fact that the narrator was willing to go do things with random people like the hermaphrodite and Jahi, for all he knows they could have been walking std factories. I guess his sheltering was why he did it, the fact that he most likely did not know about STD's. Was why he didn't double take at any chances to have relations with random strangers.