The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass

SNAPSHOTS mini challenge

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.

Creepy, right? Imagine being 17 in your last year of high school and having to read this for lit class, and watch the movie (the image above is the DVD cover). Suffice it to say that I never wanted anything to do with that twisted little German tale of a boy inside the womb who narrates the story as though he were an adult; a paranoid psychopathic adult. Full of violence, uncomfortable sexuality since the adult inside the baby has “urges”, and dark family secrets, it freaked the hell out of my teenage sensibilities. Just my luck when years later in graduate school studying drama, I was cast to play that little freaks mother in a staged reading, and had to take home the DVD to study the role. It was high school back to haunt me! In the end it was a valuable lesson in how to deal with playing unlikable characters from regrettable books that I will hopefully never read again!

BTW, love this idea alto!