I was also fourteen when I “met” Pablo Neruda — it was that same high school literature class that introduced me (and forty-three other teenage girls) to the wonderful world of this man’s poetry, and I don’t think any of us were quite the same again.
I will never forget the first time we watched Il Postino, because that’s the time I found out I needed to wear glasses. We were in the school AVR watching the subtitled movie, and I was the only one not laughing along with everyone else — because I couldn’t read the subtitles! I got my glasses within the week, but I wasn’t able to enjoy the movie until college, when my Great Books Class watched it after taking up Antonio Skarmeta’s Burning Patience (the novel on which Il Postino was based).