or: How Stephen King May Have Quite Possibly Ruined my Life

when I was younger, I read a lot.... whatever I could get my hands on. we had a lot of random books in the house, some picked up at garage sales, some brought home from school, some borrowed from the library. My older brothers would bring home stuff they'd have to read - Animal Farm, Old Man and the Sea, The Pearl... I read all those by the time I was 10-11. I also read Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High, so, like I said, anything I could get my hands on.
One day, when I was still around 10 or 11, perusing my brother's book shelf for something new to read, I spied a hefty paperback.... the front cover was ripped off (as they sometimes do when you get books used) and the first few pages were all curled up at the corners and a bit yellowed..... on the first page, all it said was "IT".... I asked my brother, "hey - have you read it?" "read what?" "read IT? did you read IT?" "oh yeah... I read it.... loved it.... IT's good."
IT was Stephen King's IT.... all 2000 pages of it (or something like that)..... I read it..... I thought it was fantastic. I then proceeded to read everything else Stephen King ever wrote - some good, some bad.... all of them long....

I am 100% positive that my love of reading is what made me appear, to all my teachers at the time, as being 'gifted.' i would score really high on the standardized tests, I would write pretty decent essays and short stories and whatnot, and so I was always in the advanced reading and the accelerated programs, etc. Math was never my forte.... but it seemed that every other subject was given a major boost by simply being able to read quickly and being able to remember what I read....
and so it came to pass that a couple of my teachers took note of me.... and I ended up being suggested for a program..... forms were submitted, filled out by my own hand since my mom didn't speak English very well at the time.... an essay was written and mailed off and large envelopes arrived at my house.
I was to be interviewed for the chance to go to some sort of exclusive boarding school, somewhere in New England, for my 8th grade. It had a name like "The Willow Rose Academy" or some such thing....
The day of the interview arrived and my uncle had taken a day off of work to come get me and my mom (becasue my mom didn't know how to drive).... I tried to find something nice to wear, but being a chubby kid with a bad perm and going through a painful, painful awkward stage, there was little I could do to appear presentable (in my mind). And for whatever reason, at the last minute, I realized that I didn't have any dress shoes.... so on the way to this interview, we stopped by Payless to pick up a cheap pair of dress shoes for me.... I was wearing a black skirt and black pantyhose and god help me, I picked a pair of white shoes. i think they're the only pair I could find or something....
the next thing I remember, I was sitting in a chair across from a PANEL of interviewers..... that really threw me off..... I had thought it would be me and one other person.....
and they talked about how there were only 30 spots available and how they were down to 60 applicants, etc.
they asked about my favorite subjects... they commented that my math scores had dropped in the last year....
I had told them, honestly, that my dad used to help me with math and really make sure I got it and that he had died earlier that year and ever since then, I was having trouble with it....
looking back, that was probably a bad answer - it may have appeared that I was out for sympathy or something.
but then it got worse.....
we discussed how I loved reading....
they asked me what I was reading, if anything, right now.....
and as luck would have it - at the time of this interview, I had just finished reading a Stephen King novel called Gerald's Game.....
of all the fucking books that I could've been reading at the time, I was reading a book about a guy who takes his wife far into the woods for a romantic weekend, handcuffs her to the bed for some kinky sex, and then he drops dead of a heart attack, leaving her handcuffed, naked, and alone in a cabin far from everyone.... and she starts going a bit mad and seeing things and after a few days, she ends up slicing her wrists with a glass from the bedside and using her own blood to slide her hands through the handcuffs.....

and that's what I told them.....

in my mismatched outfit and my awful frizzy hair, after lamenting about my dead dad, I described to them a horribly age inappropriate book.....

and the next envelope that arrived at my house was not a big envelope.... it was a little envelope.....
it said that they thanked me for my time but they have not selected me to be in their program. they assured me that I am bright and that they're confident I will go far.....