I've been sewing this afternoon, which is in itself amazing. We have a book deadline looming and sewing is a small part of my pile of work. I can't share more than a peek but the quilts we are making are pretty!
Anyway, when I'm sewing my mind tends to wander and for the last few days it's been wandering to Quinn Fabray. Quinn is a character on Glee and if you haven't watched the most recent episode you might want to stop reading right now.
I love Glee! The high school drama, the music, the imperfect adults—these characters feel real to me. That said, if I knew them in real life, I'd probably lose patience with many of them.
Quinn is a character who has been through a lot but recently she pulled herself together, was going to Yale, looking forward to a great life. And then—not. At the end of the episode I felt much as I would if one of my friend's had lost a daughter. It was physical.
Several of the characters on Glee will be aging out at the end of this season. Quinn was one of them. I hate to think that she's dead, but if she died in that wreck BECAUSE SHE WAS TEXTING WHILE DRIVING maybe it will have an impact on more viewers than me. I don't text and drive but I've been known to glance at my phone. No more of that.
FYI, Steve thinks I'm crazy but then he never cried at Hallmark commercials either. I told him I'd probably dream about Quinn that night, and I did, and he thinks that's sort of wrong too. But you know, the idea that mourning the (probable) death of a TV character is wrong is exactly the reason that my wandering mind keeps going back to Quinn.
Honestly, I know the characters on Glee better than I know many of my genetic relatives. I can't help but care about these fictional characters. I've spent so much time getting to know them! Aren't there characters in books or movies or on TV that you feel the same way about?
It's the idea that we are all characters in our own dramas that is so interesting to me. Imagine yourself as a character—playing yourself in your very own life. The people we know and love (or know and don't love) inhabit our dramas as we inhabit theirs. Our lives are like a TV drama without any cameras.
In a strange way, this idea feels empowering to me. We can re-write our dramas and make changes as we need to. We have some control… until we get written out of the show…
So now I'm going back to the sewing machine.