If you knew then, Mr. Green Jeans

I found that both pieces offered a myriad of ways to look at creative non-fiction as a genre. "Son of Mr. Green Jeans" was a disjointed telling of history by providing a series of seemingly unrelated facts to provide "a meditation on fathers", which took many pieces and made into a whole. "If You Knew Then What I Know Now" is a memoir using every little detail the author can recall to "warn" his younger self of what he was getting into, creating the memories that Ryan recalls now, in the present.

In Van Meter's story, I was confused about the line in the middle "They saw it and there it will be, holding a box of cupcakes." Is he referring to himself naively holding the box of cupcakes referring as a metaphoric image of his homosexuality? It was interesting that, in their reunion, Van Meter is conscious of the reunion apology cliche and acts on it, telling Jared not to apologize.

"Green Jeans" is written from small snippets of time, often including an exact year or date which made the story that much more personal. By providing that level of detail (read: you can google it), Moore brings the reader to realistic people doing realistic things. He increases his solidity as a reliable source by using the name of the actors rather than referring to their roles in their respective television shows. He provides their names for reference but doesn't go into specifics of their character - this is to create a connection with the audience as if the name says it all. Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best were iconic in the time that the flourished and the narrator relies on this importance to bring the actors to realistic life with facts on the juxtaposition of their cookie-cutter Father roles and what kind of lives they actually lead.

The tense of Van Meter's story is an interesting choice. It's basically second person future tense, which puts the author at a different point in time from the audience. This perfectly describes the title: the author's hindsight vision is twenty-twenty and wants to address that to his past-self by describing each step of the story to him as inevitable because he's already seen it. I think it worked though I wonder if the end could have been changed. I liked the transition to present tense, to show the audience that we've entered the "What I know now" but I wonder if he had continued with the future tense, would it have worked just as well?