The Outside Cover

We live in the world of technology and with this comes many changes: radio, black and white, the postal service, and good old socialization have become components of the past. Replacing them are IPads, 3D television, texting, and Facebook. Of these innovations, the replacement of the book with e-book or e-reader seems to be the most unlikely to be noticed. However, as I’ve come to realize in my 15 years of life, a book is not just paper and ink, but also a dream, a fork in the road, a home, and, as I stare at my personal collection of highly damaged novels, an affirmation of the struggles in the life of a teenage girl.

When we first pick up a new book and are therefore propelled into an unknown world, it can feel a little uncomfortable and depthless as we ourselves are experiencing this outward prospective. The as we chase deeper and deeper into the ever-developing plot of this life, thrashing our way through jungles of uncertainties and dead-end alleyways, coming to understand the enclosed minds of the characters which we come to call friends, somewhere, we discover ourselves. And though it pains us to say good-bye, we close the last page, and continue on another journey into the next life. A relative structure is used to examine my own life; in the beginning years of my life, I rarely had any friends, was extremely self-conscious about my weight, height, and speech, and was constantly harassed for them. In later years, the teasing stopped, but these ideals were still being dangled in the forefront of my thoughts, and it has not been until recently that I have been redeemed from their grasp. This deliverance only occurred after reading an exceptional novel, and acquiring a new view of the outside cover.

A child hiding underneath a thick blanket in the dead of night with a flashlight and book in hand cannot be replaced by a bright LCD screen. Opening a new book and smelling the fresh, welcoming scent of new paper and freshly printed ink cannot be duplicated by machinery. A teenager finding a life-changing novel in the dark, forgotten corner of a library cannot be replicated by bland online catalogs. A young woman rereading her favorite book remembering from the water marks and crinkled pages, when she had laughed, and when she had cried, will not be recreated by a lifeless hunk of glass and metal. Unpremeditatedly, these notions were connected in my mind, and I discovered, just as the outside cover of a book may be torn and broken, my imperfections allow me to complete task that others cannot, and they created me into who I am today. Consequently, my imperfections are imperfections no longer.

I believe in the paperback book because its exterior completes its purpose of enlightening the reader. And just as I, and I assume thousands of other young women, the book refuses to be changed by surrounding influences. This I Believe.