Basically what the author is trying to say is how Colin is stuck in the middle of life when it comes to behaving like a kid and also thinking like an adult. I think it could be described best through a passage in the essay, "The collision in his mind of what he understands, what he hears, what he figures out, what popular culture pours into him, what he knows, what he pretends to know, and what he imagines, makes an interesting mess. The mess often has the for of what he will probably think like when he is a grown man, but the content of what he is like as a little boy" (Orlean 256).
The main artifacts that drew out the main idea were when Colin was talking about money and it's importance and value. Colin has incredible knowledge, close to an adult, on to how much a lawyer makes and also how much the lottery was worth. This shows how much adult knowledge he knows as a ten year old. However, he shows that he is still a kid by having a great obsession over Nintendo and Street Fighter, where it is mentioned that, "At Danny's, you will find Pizza, candy, Nintendo, and a very few girls. To a 10-year-old boy, it is the most beautiful place in the world" (Orlean 258).
I think Susan Orlean did a very thorough observation on Colin's environment because she was very descriptive in her observation on where Colin always goes to every week and these places were his classroom at Montclair Cooperative School and his hangout spot with his best friend Japeth at Danny's pizzeria. In other words, she managed to include and capture the emotion, tension and view of that moment she spent with Colin. The fifth-grade classroom is on the top floor, under the dormers, which gives the room the eccentric shape and closeness of an attic. It is rather an informal environment (Orlean 257). This manage to capture the moment and it seems that she probably stayed and observed Colin through out the entire school day because she was walking with him on the way home and even managed to quiz him about his world views (Orlean 258). However, I would say that she only managed to go to school with him twice or three times. The other place of observation was at Danny's pizzeria where they went with Japeth after class was dismissed (Orlean 257).
The other method of field work was done by interview and it was mainly done on Colin and a little bit on the father. The interview with Colin was about biggest advantage to adulthood, general opinions about which is better, and others. As for the father, Susan asked about his father's observations on Colin's day to day living. Basically, I think that when Susan did her interview with Colin and the father, her focusing question was what is America's view of a normal boy in this age and time because with modernization and technology growing, the knowledge and associating oneself with video game, sex education, money and other things at a very young age is becoming more and more common.
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