Liferaft of the Rings

By the time I reached eighth grade, I had already moved countries twice, states three times, cities seven times, and houses nine times in the five years since my family had left Canada. Through all this, I had desperately clung to whatever friends I could find, hoping and praying we would not be moving again. By the time we settled in Marion, Illinois, I was enrolled in a painfully Catholic school, and starting to wonder if making friends was even worth the trouble, as my father refused to unpack in apprehension of another move. I was thrilled when was accepted into a clique of five girls who all had two things in common - they were head-over-heels in awe of their 'leader', and all absolutely obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien's books, mainly, 'The Lord of the Rings'.

At first, I was hesitant to go anywhere near such books, having associated 'fantasy' with 'nerdy' for most of my life. However, desperation to understand their 'inside jokes' and really join in their group drove me to search out 'The Hobbit', which I was told was a prelude to the 'Rings' books.

The copy I found had been shoved roughly onto the miniscule bookshelf at the back of my homeroom class, most of it's pages torn from the binding and the pages all dog-eared or stained with food, ink or, oddly, nail polish. The next time 'silent reading' rolled around, I cracked open the pages and immediately became absorbed in the story of Bilbo Baggins and his unwitting involvement in a Dwarf-quest to recover their stolen halls and treasure from an evil dragon named Smaug.

As soon as I finished 'The Hobbit', I ran out and - having found 'Rings' to be slightly above my reading-comprehension level at the time - bought 'Fellowship' and 'Two Towers' on dvd, falling for the story of Frodo's adventures even faster than I'd fallen for Bilbo's.

Unfortunately, the clique I'd been 'accepted' into wasn't the slightest bit impressed.

"We" meaning the leader, since whatever her opinion was immediately applied to everyone else - "don't watch the movies." With that, the five of them skipped off, leaving me feeling numb as I unknowingly resolved never to be a 'sheep' again.

I've grown to become an almost nerdy 'Rings' fan, and, since moving back to almost six years ago, have started reading 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Children of Hurin', sought out 'The Silmarillion', and have reread my own ratty, dog-eared copy of 'The Hobbit' three times, intermitently cracking open to my favorite parts to get me through bouts of depression - knowing each time I read it, that I will never regret my decision to leave the mainstream of preppy cliques and go out on my intellectual own.