It's Kind of a Funny Story
Ned Vizzini
Craig
Gilner accomplished his life goal by getting into the most
prestigious high school he could, Manhattan Executive
Pre-Professional High School. Impressive! How did he do this? By
spending his middle school years (or at least the last year) doing
nothing but studying for the entrance exam. By giving up friends,
extra-curricular activities, hobbies—everything that would distract
him from his goal. Now that he's in high school, Craig feels
inadequate and ill prepared, like he got in by mistake. He falls
behind in classes, which makes him worry about not only classes, but
his entire future. College...job...lifestyle... All this anxiety
leads to an on-going depression that leads to Craig calling the
suicide hotline one night and (somewhat accidentally) checking
himself into the adult psychiatric ward of the nearest hospital.
Despite
having given up everything important or interesting in order to study
flashcards, Craig is a likable character who realizes that, although
he's depressed, he actually has a pretty good life. His family loves
him, he has a home in a good neighborhood, plenty of food (when he
can manage to eat it), etc. Craig reaches out to others and tries to
help them as he can, and accepts help when it is offered.
“It's
Kind of a Funny Story” is the perfect title for this book—there
are plenty of humorous and touching moments, but ultimately, it's
only kind of funny because it not only focuses on Craig's depression,
it points out that depression is a disturbingly wide-spread problem.
Craig isn't the only one in his peer group who suffers. He gradually
realizes that possibly a majority of his acquaintances see a
therapist or take medication.
As I
alluded to earlier, Craig has difficulty eating. He throws up a lot
when he does manage to get food down, and other times he can't even
do that. However, he gets pretty excited when he realizes that the
hospital serves the two foods he can usually manage to eat: chicken
nuggets and broccoli. So, for my “It's Kind of a Funny
Story”-themed meal, I made baked chicken nuggets with homemade
honey mustard and steamed broccoli. I won't include a recipe for
steamed broccoli because I didn't do anything fancy (Well, here it
is: boil water, put broccoli in a steamer, and let steam over boiling
water 6 minutes, or however long you like. Eat with salt and pepper.)
The chicken nuggets are more flavorful than what I imagine you'd get
in a hospital, but...if you want to be really authentic, you can just
buy a bag of frozen nuggets. These ones are actually really
delicious, fairly healthy and very simple.
Baked
Chicken Nuggets
1.15 lbs
boneless, skinless chicken tenders, cut into 1 1/2” chunks
1 c.
seasoned bread crumbs
½ c.
grated Parmesan cheese (the really fine, shakable stuff!)
1 tsp.
Salt
1 Tbsp.
Dried basil
A few
shakes of poultry seasoning
½ c.
butter, melted
- Preheat oven to 400 F.
- Mix bread crumbs, cheese and seasonings in a small bowl. (I only ended up using about half the mixture, so I recommend setting aside half. That way, you won't get raw chicken all over the whole mix, and can use the leftovers another day!)
- One by one, coat chicken pieces in melted butter, then coat in bread crumb mixture. Lay on lightly-greased baking sheet.
- Once all of the chicken pieces have been coated, bake for about 20 min.
Homemade
Honey Mustard
Whisk
together:
¼ c.
Dijon mustard (I used Grey Poupon country-style.)
3 Tbsp.
Melted butter (because the butter starts out melted, it can get
chunky after awhile. But my
husband
said it still looked okay to him!)
2 Tbsp.
Honey (I used agave because we were out of honey—still good!)
1 tsp.
Apple cider vinegar
Salt and
Pepper to taste
