You know with Criss Cross, I know that some people see it as a quiet book or that not a lot happens. To me a whole lot happens. Especially for example, so the main character Debbie, there’s a scene in which she rescues a woman from diabetic shock, fixes the plumbing, jump starts the car, and the woman to the hospital. To me that’s a lot of action.
So I think a lot of things happen. But I also think that you know, I had a friend once who said to me you know little things happen to you and you think that they’re really big things and I think that’s okay, I’m okay with that. Little things are big things for me.
I was thinking about high school, I was a late bloomer also romantically and I didn’t really date anybody in high school. But I was thinking back and I was thinking how in adolescence you know there are people who are having lots of romantic action but then there are people who can barely say hello to someone of the opposite or same gender.
And I was thinking about how so often like maybe you look at somebody but they’re not looking at the right time and so they look away and then they look at you and you’re not looking so you just miss your moment, you know and I feel like there are all these missed opportunities and I see these gazes going like this. And there’s a movie…is it Strangers on a Train?
Where the stranger entreats the hero to commit a crime and he’s saying you commit this crime and I’ll commit that crime, criss cross. And so somehow that phrase of the “two missed things” seems to perfectly embody all those missed opportunities. I think that so often when kids have experienced a missed opportunity they don’t even know it and they think I’m doing it wrong, I’m not getting it right.
And really like if you just keep trying at some point you won’t criss cross, you’ll connect. So that’s what I was trying to say I think. One of the things I was trying to say, I was trying to say a lot of things.
I think there are moments in our lives, and that happens in the chapter for Hector that’s called sponge state. I think there are just moments in our lives where we’re ready to see things. And it could be a romantic interest or it could be a guitar or it could be a motorcycle or just whatever, when your mind is in the right state you’ll make a connection with whatever is in front of you. And I think that’s really interesting.