outlanderent
August 27th, 2010, 02:07 AM
I got to spend a few lengthy evenings with a really great friend from my youth...Stephen King.
Don't get excited. I don't know the guy on a personal level (although, Steve, if you're reading this, bro...beers are on me! Just give me a call), but his stories and I go WAAAYYYYYY back. 1984, to be exact. The year of George Orwell; Big Brother; and the explosion of hair metal.
Midland, Texas. I was a freshman in high school that year, which bored my tits off, I tell you! I needed a new flavor. I needed a spark. I'd heard of King, and knew that the churches hated the guy, and kept trying to burn his books. That's cool, right? I hope someday, someone tries to burn MY books. It could happen!
I picked up a dog eared paper back called 'Salem's Lot. I haven't been the same since.
Once I finished 'Salem's Lot, I had a new found admiration and respect for the written word, and one's ability to tell a good story. I couldn't get enough! I sought out every book of his that I could find. Stephen King carried my sanity through high school...which is a fricken scary statement, now that I look at it.
I'll never forget my senior year. Cooper High School. Abilene, Texas. Still titless with boredom. Mrs. Hutchinson's advanced placement American Literature class. Many of you took a class like this, and likely remember it with fear and loathing. It's that class where all you do is read dusty old 100 year books written by dudes with syphillis and a constipated mentality on women and religion.
...I was so excited...
There were five books we had to read that semester. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding; The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; and Watership Down by Richard Adams (I'd read this one. Liked it quite a lot. Just never understood why we were reading it for American Lit when the author was British...go figure. Modern education system).
Mrs. Hutchinson was a weird duck. First of all, she never wore the same set of clothes twice. We thought she might be doing the old "mix and match", but no. She simply never wore an item of clothing a second time. Her closet must have been STUPID big! Add to this, her odd attachment to large, clunky jewelry. Giant assed wood balls painted in bright colors. Grotesque costume jewelry with fake jewels the size of tennis balls. Rope chains as big as your thumb. Three of them. Braided together.
I know it seems harmless, but she was creepy, and she absolutely, unequivicably, without remorse or question, hated my guts. It was an instant disliking, too. There was none of this "let's get to know each other and see if we can co-exist." No. Screw that. Within the first two weeks of class, I was sitting on the very last row, in the furthest corner of the room, as far from her desk, or any of my classmates as I could be. I had to get my class notes by smoke signal.
Naturally, I made it my quest for advanced placement American Literature (with British novelists) to make her life so miserable that she either quit, or had some sort of emotional collapse before the end of the semester.
Stephen King was my co-conspirator!
The only thing Mrs. Hutchinson hated more than me was modern horror and sci-fi novelists! Especially Stephen King. "They are hacks!" she would bellow from the depths of her new elasti-slacks and 3 pounds of costume jewelry. "They have no concept of REAL literature! I hope they burn every one of those books!" She was pentecostal and bi-polar. Great combination. Especially when your goal in sheer annoyance...and mine was!
I had already read three of the five books we were assigned. I could take the tests and do just fine, thank you. But, alas, Mrs. H didn't see it that way. You could only read HER books in her class.
...yay...
It started with Cujo. The rest of the class was working on Lord of the Flies...a chapter a day. I couldn't take it. I brought a paperback copy of Cujo to class.
Hutchinson hit the roof. I had brought blasphemy into her room, and would likely rot in hell for it. She took the book up and put it in her desk drawer.
I now had my means for her destruction and downfall.
That afternoon, I went back to the bookstore with $15, and bought every copy of Cujo, Christine and Different Seasons that they had. There were a dozen or so of each.
Every day. Another copy in class. Every day. She took it up and put it in her drawer. By the time the class finished Flies, I had finished Cujo (of which she had 13 copies in her desk). Then it was time for The Scarlett Letter. I hadn't read it before, so I took it home and knocked it out in one night. The next day, a clean, new copy of Christine was in my hands.
She was furious! She wanted to send me to the office, suspend me, have me drawn and quartered...but I was reading in a reading class and passing all of my quizzes and tests with flying colors. What were they going to do, right?
Christine lasted for 11 or so copies before I'd finished it. Her desk was no longer big enough to hold everything, but she wouldn't give them back. The next day, she had a large cardboard box...full of my books.
By the time we reached Watership Down, I was into Different Seasons, and Mrs. Hutchinson was into gin and anti-depressants. At the end of the semester, the vice-principal made her give me my books back, and made me apologize for my antagonistic nature.
Good times!
BTW I spent my week of recovery reading Duma Key. It's a good one!
But I recommend them all!
Don't get excited. I don't know the guy on a personal level (although, Steve, if you're reading this, bro...beers are on me! Just give me a call), but his stories and I go WAAAYYYYYY back. 1984, to be exact. The year of George Orwell; Big Brother; and the explosion of hair metal.
Midland, Texas. I was a freshman in high school that year, which bored my tits off, I tell you! I needed a new flavor. I needed a spark. I'd heard of King, and knew that the churches hated the guy, and kept trying to burn his books. That's cool, right? I hope someday, someone tries to burn MY books. It could happen!
I picked up a dog eared paper back called 'Salem's Lot. I haven't been the same since.
Once I finished 'Salem's Lot, I had a new found admiration and respect for the written word, and one's ability to tell a good story. I couldn't get enough! I sought out every book of his that I could find. Stephen King carried my sanity through high school...which is a fricken scary statement, now that I look at it.
I'll never forget my senior year. Cooper High School. Abilene, Texas. Still titless with boredom. Mrs. Hutchinson's advanced placement American Literature class. Many of you took a class like this, and likely remember it with fear and loathing. It's that class where all you do is read dusty old 100 year books written by dudes with syphillis and a constipated mentality on women and religion.
...I was so excited...
There were five books we had to read that semester. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding; The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; and Watership Down by Richard Adams (I'd read this one. Liked it quite a lot. Just never understood why we were reading it for American Lit when the author was British...go figure. Modern education system).
Mrs. Hutchinson was a weird duck. First of all, she never wore the same set of clothes twice. We thought she might be doing the old "mix and match", but no. She simply never wore an item of clothing a second time. Her closet must have been STUPID big! Add to this, her odd attachment to large, clunky jewelry. Giant assed wood balls painted in bright colors. Grotesque costume jewelry with fake jewels the size of tennis balls. Rope chains as big as your thumb. Three of them. Braided together.
I know it seems harmless, but she was creepy, and she absolutely, unequivicably, without remorse or question, hated my guts. It was an instant disliking, too. There was none of this "let's get to know each other and see if we can co-exist." No. Screw that. Within the first two weeks of class, I was sitting on the very last row, in the furthest corner of the room, as far from her desk, or any of my classmates as I could be. I had to get my class notes by smoke signal.
Naturally, I made it my quest for advanced placement American Literature (with British novelists) to make her life so miserable that she either quit, or had some sort of emotional collapse before the end of the semester.
Stephen King was my co-conspirator!
The only thing Mrs. Hutchinson hated more than me was modern horror and sci-fi novelists! Especially Stephen King. "They are hacks!" she would bellow from the depths of her new elasti-slacks and 3 pounds of costume jewelry. "They have no concept of REAL literature! I hope they burn every one of those books!" She was pentecostal and bi-polar. Great combination. Especially when your goal in sheer annoyance...and mine was!
I had already read three of the five books we were assigned. I could take the tests and do just fine, thank you. But, alas, Mrs. H didn't see it that way. You could only read HER books in her class.
...yay...
It started with Cujo. The rest of the class was working on Lord of the Flies...a chapter a day. I couldn't take it. I brought a paperback copy of Cujo to class.
Hutchinson hit the roof. I had brought blasphemy into her room, and would likely rot in hell for it. She took the book up and put it in her desk drawer.
I now had my means for her destruction and downfall.
That afternoon, I went back to the bookstore with $15, and bought every copy of Cujo, Christine and Different Seasons that they had. There were a dozen or so of each.
Every day. Another copy in class. Every day. She took it up and put it in her drawer. By the time the class finished Flies, I had finished Cujo (of which she had 13 copies in her desk). Then it was time for The Scarlett Letter. I hadn't read it before, so I took it home and knocked it out in one night. The next day, a clean, new copy of Christine was in my hands.
She was furious! She wanted to send me to the office, suspend me, have me drawn and quartered...but I was reading in a reading class and passing all of my quizzes and tests with flying colors. What were they going to do, right?
Christine lasted for 11 or so copies before I'd finished it. Her desk was no longer big enough to hold everything, but she wouldn't give them back. The next day, she had a large cardboard box...full of my books.
By the time we reached Watership Down, I was into Different Seasons, and Mrs. Hutchinson was into gin and anti-depressants. At the end of the semester, the vice-principal made her give me my books back, and made me apologize for my antagonistic nature.
Good times!
BTW I spent my week of recovery reading Duma Key. It's a good one!
But I recommend them all!