Perks of Being a Wallflower Video Montage

When are the glory days?

Charlie’s brother is a major college football player. He clearly will have what Charlie describes as “glory days”, those times where he will look back at his football playing an be able to recall times what are worthy of stories.
Charlie’s dad played college and high school baseball and he has “glory days” and he tells about his homerun ball in his high school state tournament game back when he was a sophomore. The best part about it is that he never has to exaggerate to make the story glorious; he just has to tell it.
When Charlie looks at he dad’s yearbook photograph, he sees a person who is happy and secure as well as rugged and satisfied. He wonders if he will have glory days and then realizes that he may actually be living them right now. If that is true, then he is happy about it, but sad too that they are not a glorious as his dad’s stories.
He does however think that one day, his own kids will look at his yearbook photo and think that he was much happier then than they ever will be, but he promises himself that he will tell them that they are in their glory days and are as happy now as he was in those photos. Your glory days are what you make of them.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

It’s been no secret that Charlie likes Sam in a way that goes beyond friendship even though she has told him that they could never be a ‘couple’. That makes it even harder for Charlie as he begins to mature and truly feel the pains of wanting Sam in his life as more than just a friend. Before Thanksgiving, Sam begins to see a guy named Craig who is much older than him and even older than Sam. Charlie thinks the guy must be 21 because he drinks a lot. Charlie explains that Sam met Craig while playing in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and that Craig is actually a nice guy, but different. In a bit of selfish regret, Charlie wishes that Sam would break up with Craig but it’s hard to tell if it s because he is falling in love with her or because he wants to protect her. This idea comes from the one description of Craig that makes Charlie not like him: Craig’s sense of what love and beauty are.
Craig takes pictures and he is really good at it. But when he takes pictures of Sam, he never sees that the pictures are beautiful because Sam is in them, he sees them as beautiful because he took them. He thinks that it so the wrong kind of love that Craig expresses and that Sam misinterprets, but he doesn’t want to butt in. Instead, he hopes that one day he can take a picture of Sam to show her how beautiful she is regardless of how the picture comes out. By the end of the entry, Charlie realizes, through a conversation with his sister, that love has a way of making people blind. His sister secretly dates a guy that their father disapproves of because he has a temper and hit her, but she continues to overlook that and sees the guy anyway. In the end, Charlie sort of understands, but overall, he finds that because of their situations, he cares about each of them even more.

You really are..

In early November, Charlie explains the whole idea behind the relationship between his friend Patrick and the football team quarterback, Brad. The story in itself is really simple, Patrick always liked Brad and Brad, who has a reputation for being a tough football player secretly, had feelings for Patrick but didn’t show them to keep up his image.
After several parties, where Brad would pretend to be more drunk or high than he actually was, Patrick and Brad finally got it out to each other that they liked one another. The relationship was good, but it had to be hidden so that Brad could continue to be who he was around school and in front of other kids and his parents. He continued to drink and smoke and even got high before school. Patrick could tell that part of this was to hold up the disguise of not being sure he wanted to be in a relationship with Patrick another part was to use as an excuse for the things that happened them if hey were caught together and the another part seemed to be so that Brad could cope with the idea that he could never truly be himself around others and it hurt him to hide.
Eventually, Brad’s drinking got worse and Patrick made the decision to help Brad get assistance. It meant he would see less of Brad, but it also meant Brad would be okay on many level.
Charlie learns that it’s tough being yourself if you have to hide who you really are. He also learns that people are not who they always claim to be and also that sometimes they are better or different than whom they claim to be. In the end , he realized that when you care about someone, you will risk everything to help them survive in the world they live in, even if it means you have to get hurt in the end.

Being a Wallflower...

In late October, Charlie attends a party with Sam and Patrick where he truly learns the meaning of being someone’s friend. In a world where adolescents find it hard to reach out and find a person they can trust, Charlie learns that he can be that person by simply being himself. A the party that a friends of Patrick’s holds, an older guy named Bob, Charlie comes across as the most interesting part of the crowd because he is younger than the rest and less experienced in partying. The attention Charlie gets allows him to be more himself and the security of that makes him more certain of who he is in his world. He mentions that as they walked through the door Sam and Patrick hugged Bob, and then, even, “Bob hugged me!” The feeling of acceptance was overwhelming for Charlie, but comforting as well.
Later at the party, Charlie refuses to drink some beer and finds that the older kids “seniors I think” don’t make fun of him for not drinking, but instead respect his decision. Another thing that Charlie finds interesting is getting to meet Brad, the football team quarterback, whom he had always just seen from a distance in the school hallways. Meeting him in person made him realize that he is just a regular person too.
After a while, Charlie ends up getting high, by mistake, after eating some brownies with pot in them. As Sam takes care of him, he wanders off through the upstairs of the house and finds Patrick, with Brad, together. The situation startles Brad, but Patrick smooths it over and Charlie goes back downstairs. The whole incident, which could have been blown out of proportion, becomes a turning point for Charlie. In a mature way, he considers his friend Patrick’s situation, and Brad’s, and keeps from judging what he saw. It pays off too. Later that night, Patrick says about Charlie to the others at the party, “He’s something, isn’t he?” and “He’s a wallflower… You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.” Charlie says that he didn’t think “people thought things about me”. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even “know they looked” at him. However, the lesson learned that evening, about respecting others, caring about what others feel is important to them, and simply being there for your friends, although it makes you more like a wallflower than a person, makes you the person you always wished you could be.