The Glass Castle #5

Although I would expect the opposite, Walls seems to have a friendly relationship with the content in her book. She describes events that would terrify or gross any normal person out as exciting adventures. Such as when Walls tells of how her family's house was so infested by cockroaches that the bugs crawled freely on the walls in large clumps. Every night, she and her siblings would go on roach killing tirades, which didn't take much effort because you could put your foot down anywhere and it would land on a roach. Walls reflects on nights like this with a fondness for the fun she had, instead of the expected disgust, for killing roaches is definitely not my idea of fun. Also, Walls describes how her parents kept all the windows and doors of their house open during the night. Although they intended for this to help air circulation, on more than one occasion a homeless or drunk person wandered in. To me, this sounds absolutely ridiculous. Why would you leave all of the entrances to your house open, knowing that any sort of person could get inside and steal all of your stuff or harm your family? But nevertheless, the doors and windows stayed open. If I were sleeping in that house, I would be terrified of burglars or scary people sneaking into my room during the night. But for some reason, the idea of someone ever harming the Walls' family never entered their minds. That is, until the creepy neighborhood pervert deciding to drop in and try to rape Walls while she was sleeping! Even then, after Walls and her brother had chased the pervert into the street, the doors and windows continued to stay open and Walls continued to sleep peacefully for the nights afterwards. Walls never had any tone of resentment or fear as she recounts this episode. To her, it seems, that the situation only brought on a new and exciting hobby, going pervert hunting.