r. They have to evaluate themselves. They are ashamed because they realize they have run across people who do not have to act badly, because they are bad.As they are about to leave a Mustang drives up and one of its occupants gets out looking for the biker when she sees the three friends she say,” “Hey, you guys look like some pretty bad characters – been fighting, huh?” (119) They do not know how to answer her, yes, they have been fighting but they are not bad. Her perception of them is based on the way they look, how the car looks. She is judging them by what she sees, not of who they truly are. When the narrator thinks “I [am] going to cry.” (119) It is because he realizes: they may look and act like bad characters but they not, looks are deceiving. He and his friends learn a valuable lesson, “There will always be a character badder then they are” (a posting by T.C. Boyle at www.tcboyle.com, Boyle’s homepage) they also realize that but for an act of fate, anyone of them could be the guy floating in the lake.The three friends learn valuable lessons from the experience they went through; never judge a book by it’s cover, never underestimate their opponents and most importantly, there truly is a difference between a bad character and a bad character wanna-be.Works CitedBoyle, T. Coraghessan. “Greasy Lake.” *u*An Introduction to Fiction*/u*. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 111-119Panza, John, “Rough Draft Essay Response.” 25 Nov. 2000www.tcboyle.com. Homepage. 12 Nov. 2000...
