I was first introduced to S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders in the eighth grade by a teacher whom we’ll call Mrs. Swift. She was blonde, pretty, tall, smart, and I distinctly remember a classmate of mine saying she reminded her of Taylor Swift, who was real big at the time on our middle school campus.

I wasn’t too close to Mrs. Swift – maybe I could’ve been. I remember confiding in her about my middle school crush, asking her if she thought we looked alike (a lot of people said we did). She smiled at me and said she could see it and that who knows? It could mean something, and that people often say her and her husband look alike as well. Her words innocently brought hope to my naive feelings for a boy who would venture on to do nothing with his life.

While I was in high school, word got out that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. Two years later, she’d passed on.

In my more recent years, entering into adulthood, I’ve thought back to her and how her family must’ve felt. I hope she knows the impact she had on so many students, including myself. The Outsiders live on in my mind and in her memory.

Francis Ford Coppola is truly amazing. He’d casted the perfect group of young 80’s studs for this film in an adaptation of S.E Hinton’s book that, in my opinion, does perfect justice to the novel. That is indeed hard to say, but if anyone could pull it off, it’d be FFC himself.

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“Mrs. Swift, who’s your favorite greaser?” I remember a student asking.

She kept it a secret and didn’t tell us, though many of us thought it was Sodapop. Sometimes, you can just tell. Though I suppose now we will never quite know.

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The motel’s favorite greaser?

I distinctly recall liking Dallas, and my friend Alice whom I also mention here and here liked Johnny. I wonder if I watch it now, would Dallas still be my favorite?

Yes. I think it would be.