Fitting In

Brooke Myers

In the book “If I Ever Get Out of Here” we see a young boy named Lewis struggle with feeling accepted at school. Lewis’s struggle revolves mainly around his race and his family’s economic class. Lewis is an Indian and he lives at the reservation in a small rundown house. At school he was the only of the Indians from the reservation in the “smart” group of children, the book explained that classes were split up by academic achievement. In class Lewis had no one from the reservation which meant that no one even acknowledged him while he was at school.

Fitting in is something we all have trouble with throughout our lives but the desire to fit in and be accepted by our peers is exacerbated in our adolescent years. I think specifically, during middle school is when most people struggle the most with this. The book “If I Ever Get Out of Here” focuses on race and economic class affecting the way a young boy is perceived. However, this idea can be applied to many different categories like someone’s weight, height, acne, learning disabilities and many more things affecting whether they are accepted.

While reading the book “If I Ever get Out of Here” I was constantly comparing how Lewis was feeling to things I went through in middle school when I felt like I did not fit in. In the first chapter of the book Lewis tries to make himself fit in by changing his appearance. “’You think cutting off your braid is going to make those white kids suddenly talk to you?’ Carson’s cousin Tami said. ‘If you believe that, you need brain surgery, not a haircut. What do you care what they think anyway? You’ve had this braid since, what, kindergarten?’” (Gansworth, 3). Further into the chapter it becomes apparent how significant the braid is to Lewis’s culture and identity. Feeling like he has to change his physical appearance so that people talk to him at school shows how desperate Lewis is to fit in. This reminded me of the Echosmith song “Cool Kids”.

One lyric in the song that specifically stood out to me when reading the book is, “He sees them walking with a big smile, but they haven’t got a clue. Yeah their living the good life, can’t see what he is going through” (Echosmith). This stood out to me because in the book Lewis is not accepted by his classmates because of his race and economic class. The people that go to school with Lewis have no idea what goes on in his life and what he deals with day to day basis. This was emphasized through Lewis and George’s friendship. Lewis is embarrassed of his home and the reservation, so he does not want George to come to his house. “George had asked me a few times to do stuff outside of school. I’d been avoiding it, thinking about the vision Carson planted in my brain – George seeing my house” (Gansworth, 30). Like the song Lewis is misunderstood by his classmates, they use his family’s economic standing and his race as a reason to not be friends with him because of this Lewis is embarrassed of his house, where he comes from, and his identity. Instead of being honest with George, Lewis finds it easier to avoid hanging out with him outside of school because he is so embarrassed of his house and that he is different from George and the other kids in their class, even though Lewis is happy to finally have a friend at school and does not want to mess it up.

When Lewis describes how he felt during lunch and that he had a forcefield around him which prevented anyone from talking to him it made me think of the staged pictures that elementary school teachers put in slideshows with the class rules during the first week of school.

“During lunch, we were required to sit with our class at two long tables. In every other section the Indians gravitated to one another like atoms in some science experiment, but I sank to the bottom of my particular beaker, alone” (Gansworth, 8). Although this comparison seems comical in my head it is horrible that so many kids experience this at school. Lewis feels this way because his classmates do not include him because he is a reservation kid which makes him different.

At all stages of our lives, we struggle with fitting in. People make judgments based on the way someone looks before getting to know them which may cause people to leave people out, like Lewis in “If I Ever Get Out of Here”. The sadness of being left out and the desire to fit in is expressed in many media volumes like music and pictures. Fitting in is something we all strive for in some capacity until we become comfortable enough in our own skin to be ourselves.

Works Cited

Gansworth, Eric L. If I Ever Get out of Here. Scholastic Inc., 2015.

Richardson, Beth. “Girl Feeling Left Out.” Therapy Innovations, http://www.therapyinnovationsnc.com/02/speech-language-therapy/4-successful-strategies-help-child-improve-social-skills/.

RSGBANDTV, director. Echosmith – Cool Kids [Official Music Video]. YouTube, YouTube, 12 Sept. 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCzDykng4g.