The narrator from the short story “Garson,” by Wayson Choy, could have easily been pulled straight from the playground of my childhood.  Not only is he a plausible character, but he is someone I really understand.  All this guy ever wanted was to belong and feel like people cared about him.  Instead, everyone paid attention to the cute kid, Garson.  He would try to get people to hug him when he was little, “stupidly raising both my arms in expectation of being lifted up” (p. 236), but nobody paid attention to him.  After a while, he started to find other ways to get attention and make people like him.  At first, he tried to be a hero and stuck up for Garson when he was picked on (p. 237), but his mother basically told him he was stupid for not running away from the bullies the way Garson did.  So then he decided to just become a bully himself.  “We picked-on kids did our share of picking on others” (p. 237).  He would laugh with the other bullies as they all “threw sticks and kicked dirt” at a helpless kid (p. 237).  You would think that the narrator would have gotten in trouble for his behaviour, but his mother just told him to stay away from the bullied kid, saying, “You don’t want to be crazy, too, do you?” (p. 238).  I was a lot like this narrator.  I was a pretty sweet kid, but I was quiet, and not super smart or super cute, so I didn’t get paid attention to very often, but people paid attention to me when I got in fights.  Girls liked me more.  Guys liked me more.  I was tough.  Eventually, though, people started picking fights with me.  By high school I was known as a bully.  There was no going back.  I would have liked to have turned my life around and get attention for my art or my welding skills, but I felt stuck in the role I had chosen for myself.  Reading about this character dredged up a lot of bad old memories for me, so I guess that means he must be a pretty plausible character.  Plausible characters are important in literature because they make us feel like we are not alone in our suffering.  The narrator character certainly made me feel a bit less alone.