“It’s like being a caterpillar in a cocoon, that’s what it is,” [Jem] said. “Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm place.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
There have been times in my life that I thought a fire-breathing dragon would be the best thing that could happen to my hometown. At a young age, I was more ambitious, desiring outright invasion, nuclear war, or perhaps a nice plague, just to shake things up. Of course, my conception of these disasters remained mostly in the abstract, literary plane. Once North Korean nukes had eradicated all the cities (not much of a loss), we Appalachians would be left to survive by our wits and discover adventure apart from the conveniences of civilization (think
Red Dawn, but with Southern accents). What I really wanted was for someone to take our sleepy, complacent town by the scruff of the neck and shove its face in reality.
