SCOUT FINCH JUST MET THE NEIGHBORHOOD CRYPTID AND I'M SHAKING: A Thread

@ScoutFinchReal
SCOUT FINCH JUST MET THE NEIGHBORHOOD CRYPTID AND I'M SHAKING: A Thread

🧵 1/
Okay y'all I need to sit down and tell you what just happened tonight because my hands are LITERALLY shaking and I don't think I'm going to sleep for the next forty-seven years

2/
So background for anyone new here: I'm Scout. I'm 8. I live in Maycomb, Alabama with my dad Atticus (lawyer, widower, absolute king) and my brother Jem who is 12 and thinks he's grown. We have a neighbor nobody has seen in like 15+ years. His name is Arthur Radley but everyone calls him Boo.

3/
For YEARS me and Jem and our friend Dill have been absolutely OBSESSED with Boo Radley. We tried to make him come out. We did plays about him. We literally rolled up to his porch on a dare. We were feral children and I accept that now.

4/
Anyway tonight was the Halloween pageant at school and I was dressed as a ham. Yes. A literal ham. My costume was made of chicken wire and cloth and I looked like a walking agricultural product. This is important later.

@ScoutFinchReal
5/
So the pageant happens and I COMPLETELY botched my entrance. Mrs. Merriweather is never going to let me live this down. I fell asleep backstage and missed my cue and stumbled out there like a ham-shaped disaster. The whole audience laughed.

6/
Jem was sweet about it though. He was like "you did fine" which is a LIE but that's what big brothers do I guess. We started walking home and it was DARK. Like, pitch black, no streetlights, middle-of-nowhere Alabama dark.

7/
I was still wearing the ham costume because I was too embarrassed to go back for my dress. So I'm shuffling through the schoolyard in the dark dressed as a ham. Normal Tuesday in Maycomb.

8/
Then Jem stopped.

He grabbed my arm and said "Be quiet."

@ScoutFinchReal
9/
Y'all. I heard footsteps behind us. When we stopped, they stopped. When we walked, they walked.

I thought it was Cecil Jacobs trying to scare us again because he jumped out at us earlier and I was NOT about to give him the satisfaction.

10/
So I yelled "Cecil Jacobs is a big fat hen!"

Nothing.

Silence.

The footsteps started again.

11/
That's when I knew something was very, very wrong.

Jem screamed "RUN!"

12/
I couldn't run. I was in a HAM COSTUME. I tripped and fell and someone — someone GRABBED me. Crushed me. I felt myself being squeezed and the chicken wire snapped and I was on the ground and I could hear Jem screaming and then there was a CRACK and Jem went silent.

@ScoutFinchReal
13/
I'm going to be honest with you, I thought we were going to die in that schoolyard. I was eight years old, trapped in a broken ham costume, and someone was trying to kill us.

14/
Then there was someone else. Another person. I heard scuffling and heavy breathing and someone fell and then... nothing. Just breathing.

15/
I got up. I couldn't see anything. I stumbled toward the road and I saw someone carrying Jem. Just... a man, carrying my brother toward our house. Jem's arm was hanging at a weird angle and I started running.

16/
I burst into the house screaming for Atticus and he called Dr. Reynolds and the sheriff, Heck Tate. Jem was unconscious. His arm was broken. He was only 12. I'm going to cry again hold on.

@ScoutFinchReal
17/
Dr. Reynolds checked on Jem and said he'd be okay. Broken arm, concussion, but he'd be okay. I was still in my ham costume. I looked like I'd been through a war and honestly I had been.

18/
Heck Tate went back to the schoolyard and came back looking like he'd seen a ghost.

"Bob Ewell's lying under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs. He's dead."

19/
BOB. EWELL.

Bob Ewell, the man who accused Tom Robinson. Bob Ewell, who spat in my daddy's face. Bob Ewell, who had been threatening our family for MONTHS.

He tried to MURDER us. He tried to murder CHILDREN.

20/
The ham costume saved my life. The chicken wire stopped the knife. I was dressed as a HAM and it literally saved my life. I will never disrespect processed meats again.

@ScoutFinchReal
21/
But here's the thing. Here's the part that I can't stop thinking about.

Who carried Jem home?

Somebody saved us. Somebody pulled Bob Ewell off us and fought him and carried my unconscious brother home.

22/
I was in Jem's room and the door was open and there was a man standing behind the door. I'd been in the room for like twenty minutes before I noticed him. He was just... standing there. Against the wall. In the shadows.

23/
He was the palest person I'd ever seen. Thin. His face was white, like he hadn't seen the sun in years. His hands were pale and his eyes were pale and he looked like he might float away.

24/
Atticus introduced me.

"Jean Louise, this is Mr. Arthur Radley. I believe he already knows you."

@ScoutFinchReal
25/
Boo.

Boo Radley.

BOO RADLEY WAS IN MY HOUSE. BOO RADLEY SAVED JEM. BOO RADLEY SAVED US.

The man we spent three summers trying to lure out of his house. The ghost. The phantom. The cryptid of Maycomb County.

26/
He was standing right there and he was just a man. A shy, quiet, gentle man who had watched over us for years and when we needed him most, he came.

27/
I looked at him and he smiled at me, this tiny nervous smile, and he reached out and touched Jem's hair so gently. Like he loved him. Like he'd always loved us.

28/
I started crying and I'm crying right now typing this.

@ScoutFinchReal
29/
Heck Tate told Atticus that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife. Atticus didn't believe it at first. My dad is the most honest man alive and he thought the sheriff was trying to cover for Jem.

30/
But Heck Tate wasn't covering for Jem. He was covering for Boo.

Because Boo saved us and killed Bob Ewell and if they dragged him into a trial and put him in front of the whole town it would destroy him.

31/
Heck Tate said: "There's a Black man dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it is dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time."

Tom Robinson. He was talking about Tom Robinson. I felt that in my chest.

32/
Atticus looked at me and asked if I understood. Could I possibly understand?

I said: "Well, it'd be sort of like shooting a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"

@ScoutFinchReal
33/
Let me explain something. My daddy told me once that it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. It's the only time I ever heard him say something was a sin. Mockingbirds don't do anything but sing. They don't eat gardens or nest in corncribs. They just sing their hearts out for us.

34/
Tom Robinson was a mockingbird. He never did anything but help people and they killed him anyway.

Boo Radley is a mockingbird. He never did anything but try to be kind to us and leave us little gifts in a tree. Dragging him into the spotlight would destroy the only gentle thing about him.

35/
Sometimes doing the right thing means protecting the quiet, gentle souls of this world from a system that would crush them. That's what Heck Tate did. That's what Atticus understood.

@ScoutFinchReal
36/
Boo asked me to walk him home. His voice was so soft I almost didn't hear him. "Will you take me home?"

He was asking ME to walk HIM home. This grown man who just saved two children asked an eight-year-old to walk him home because he was scared.

37/
I linked my arm through his because that's what you do with a gentleman and we walked next door to the Radley house. He went inside and I never saw him again.

38/
I stood on the Radley porch and looked out at the street. OUR street. And for the first time I saw it the way Boo must have seen it. I saw me and Jem running. I saw us finding his gifts in the tree. I saw us playing in the yard.

39/
He watched us grow up. From behind those shutters, he watched everything. He loved us the only way he could.

@ScoutFinchReal
40/
Atticus was reading by Jem's bed when I got home. He started reading to me and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.

He was reading a book about a boy who everyone thought was a monster but when they finally got to know him he was actually really nice.

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

41/
I think about all the stories we made up about Boo. How he ate raw squirrels. How he was six feet tall and ate cats. How he stabbed his father with scissors. We turned a lonely, kind man into a monster because that was more exciting.

42/
We do that, don't we? Make monsters out of people we don't understand. Build whole mythologies around our own fear and ignorance. And then one of them saves your life and you realize you never knew anything at all.

@ScoutFinchReal
43/
Three things I learned tonight:

1. Ham costumes are legitimate body armor and should be standard issue
2. The scariest monsters are the ones who walk around in broad daylight (Bob Ewell) not the ones who hide in the dark (Boo Radley)
3. Most people are nice when you finally see them

44/
I'm 8 years old and I'm tired and my brother's arm is broken and there's a dead man under a tree and the neighborhood cryptid turned out to be the kindest person in Maycomb.

I think I've had enough adventure for one lifetime.

Goodnight.

— Scout Finch, Maycomb Alabama, tired ham

/end thread

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💬 REPLIES:

@DillHarris_Meridian
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
WAIT. YOU MET BOO??? WITHOUT ME??? I LEAVE FOR ONE SUMMER AND THIS HAPPENS??? I literally cannot believe this I am SICK
🔁 847 ❤️ 3.2K

@JemFinch_Maycomb
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
I have a broken arm and a concussion and I just woke up and the FIRST thing I see is my sister posted a 44-tweet thread about the worst night of our lives. I literally cannot with this family.
🔁 1.2K ❤️ 5.8K

@AtticusFinchEsq
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
Scout, please go to bed. Also I'm very proud of you. Also please go to bed.
🔁 2.4K ❤️ 14.7K

@MissStephanieCrawford
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
I BEEN telling y'all about that Radley house for YEARS and nobody listened to me. I saw the whole thing from my window. Well, I saw MOST of it. Okay I heard about it this morning but I could have seen it.
🔁 312 ❤️ 1.1K

@MissMaudie_Atkinson
Replying to @MissStephanieCrawford
Stephanie, you didn't see a thing and we both know it. Sit down.
🔁 1.8K ❤️ 9.3K

@Calpurnia_Official
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
I leave y'all alone for ONE evening. ONE. I'm never taking a night off again. Baby are you okay? Is Jem eating? I'm coming over right now with food.
🔁 956 ❤️ 6.1K

@DillHarris_Meridian
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
Also I always said Boo was misunderstood. I ALWAYS said that. I had a whole plan to be nice to him. This was supposed to be MY arc.
🔁 234 ❤️ 1.7K

@MaycombCountyNews
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
Breaking: Local man Robert E. Ewell found dead near Maycomb schoolyard. Sheriff Tate confirms death by accidental self-infliction. Investigation closed.
🔁 3.1K ❤️ 892

@RandomMaycombResident
Replying to @MaycombCountyNews
Accidentally fell on his own knife? Sure. And I accidentally ate an entire pecan pie last Thursday. We all know what happened and frankly? Good.
🔁 567 ❤️ 4.2K

@JemFinch_Maycomb
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
Also I just want to say that Scout left out the part where she was STILL WEARING THE HAM COSTUME when the sheriff arrived. She sat through the entire investigation dressed as a ham. The sheriff took her statement while she was dressed as a ham. This is the funniest part and she just glossed over it.
🔁 2.7K ❤️ 11.4K

@ScoutFinchReal
Replying to @JemFinch_Maycomb
THE HAM SAVED MY LIFE JEM SHOW SOME RESPECT
🔁 1.9K ❤️ 8.6K

@EnglishTeacher_2024
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
This is required reading for my AP Lit class. The mockingbird metaphor. The way you connected Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. Ma'am you are EIGHT??
🔁 445 ❤️ 3.3K

@AtticusFinchEsq
Replying to @ScoutFinchReal
It is 1:30 in the morning. Please. Go. To. Bed.
🔁 3.8K ❤️ 18.2K