Political rants and toxic cyber sludge filled my feed as I looked along. I willed my finger to stop, and halted mid scroll smiling in delight at the refreshing picture in front of my eyes. The woman on the screen was dressed up as a ham.  Yep, you read that right, a ham.  A brown sleeping bag and some simple taped letters let the viewer of the picture know what she was. Now on the superficial level it may just seem random, but think just for a moment, and the nostalgic genius will hit you.

Ham costume = Scout Finch + Halloween Pageant.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the only books I never ever got sick of teaching (or reading) year after year. Some of the best moments of the whole year came with our end of novel discussion. We would sit in a circle and talk about the Halloween Pageant, the town rallying and bringing food, Tom Robinson, and Boo.

Staring at the costume on the screen was like saying hi to my forgotten friend who came to remind me of something I’d forgotten. A testament that fictional characters seep into everyday activities, silently beckoning us to remember their words and stories. Stephen King says “fiction is the truth inside the lie,” and I find that to be true more and more as I get older. When I saw that ham, and thought about Scout, I remembered something about hope. See, when Scout and Jem are walking home from the Halloween Pageant, Scout is tottering along in her ham costume down the dark road next to Jem. Bob Ewell jumps out, and attacks the kids, puncturing the ham costume in the shuffle. But, the chicken wire protects Scout. We know that “when [Jem] was nearly thirteen, he got his arm badly broken at the elbow” while Scout escaped physically unscathed.

One day after finishing the novel in class, some students worked something out. The costume saved her.  Prying a little deeper we tried to figure out what the costume could symbolize.  What’s the big deal about being dressed up in the ham costume? With some prompting, a student said, “a costume is childhood”. Another continued, “if it’s childhood, then it’s kind of like pure and innocent.”  This went on a while, back and forth, and ultimately we concluded that her childhood magic and a little bit of her innocence literally insulated and protected her from Bob Ewell. Jem, who was coming of age and deeply distraught at Tom Robinson’s murder, was physically and emotionally crushed. Deep awareness and grief, as well as a rich hopefulness are necessary parts of growth, but what stood out to me so strongly, was the necessity of hope and innocence to be protected. Or in other words, hope and childhood innocence; a believing heart of sorts (the ham) is what saved Scout.

Funny how an unexpected picture can be the whispering friend in your ear at the right time you needed a little thought on hope. A simple thought to brighten up the heart on hope a bit. So scroll away, but be deliberate and believing in the magic of fictional friends who are real, wise, and true in their message.