Okay so my good friend Mandie yesterday posted a link to some old weekly readers and the scholastic inserts we used to purchase books in elementary school. Over the years I have thought about those weekly readers and wondered if they were still around. FYI, they are but of course, they look so much more jazzed up then when I was a kid. Beside from the thrill of getting my own little newspaper in class, I got the opportunity to purchase books! Yes, I looked forward to that day in class, dreamed about it even. What books I would buy, which books I would circle for "next time" because Mom and Dad couldn't and wouldn't buy me every book I wanted. The circling frenzy rivaled that of the Sears Catalog at Christmas time! "I want this!" "Oh, and yes, this!!" "Can't l-i-v-e without this!!" It was awesome until one day, I bought the wrong book.
When say it was wrong, I mean in that it was not a book for me. I read the snippet and thought it sounded like my kind of read, a series of mysterious!! People who had vanished without a trace. Sounded intriguing! So I circled it and then filled out the little order form. I waited. Then the shipment arrived and my teacher handed me my stack of new books!! Sweet. And then...I read the back of the book of "mysteries" and discovered to my horror that it was not about that at all. It was about alien abductions. NOOOOO!
I must confess that I have been terrified of aliens ever since I was little kid. Hell, I was scared to even watch "V: The Final Battle" on television. I vividly remember getting scared out of my mind when one of the female characters on the show gave birth to an alien baby. (Now I have since watched this scene on YouTube and it is ridiculous. Seriously, I am no longer scared.) And now here I was with this book on alien abduction. I took it home and sat with it in my room debating on my next course of action. Keep it? Read it? Hide it? I had no idea how to tackle this new problem. And it was a problem. I realized that if I started reading the book I would no doubt have nightmares. And I slept in the basement of our home, in my own room while the rest of my family slept upstairs on the opposite end of the house. Yes people, I would be alone with this book. And easy access for the aliens to find me.
Well, I thought I would try reading it. I was hoping that by diving into the material I would somehow be less afraid. Wrong. These were "true accounts" of people who had been abducted or knew someone who had been. OMG. Seriously? I panicked. I mean, how often does this happen? Where does this happen? Could it be that someone I know right now was getting abducted by aliens? Would I be next? Crap. And then the truth finally occurred to me. This very book that I held in my hands was a beacon. The aliens now knew I knew about them and worse, they could now find me! For my young brain, this was like having a gps handed to you from outerspace. I was screwed and I knew it. For days I feared bedtime. I tried hiding the book in my closet, burying it under other odds and ends but I still knew it was there. Hell, the aliens still knew it was there. I imagined in the dark that the book pulsated and radiated strange lights, conveying the coordinates of my whereabouts. I had to act and act fast if I wanted to stay on earth.
It was over the weekend because my father was home. He normally worked late nights during the week so I hardly ever saw him. It was cold outside because our wood burning stove was on. I came up to him crying, begging him to do something with this book. I sounded irrational, I was irrational. I was also 10 years old so whatever. I don't think he exactly knew what to do about this situation but he signed on to do his very best to protect me from alien lifeforms. We settled on throwing the book into the wood burning stove. Somehow he convinced me that the fire would squash out any trace of me and once the book was resorted to ashes, the aliens would no longer be able to find me...ever. It sounded logical so that is what we did. I watched it burn. I felt better when it no longer resembled a book or my nightmares. All was good with the world again. Proof you say? I am still here. The aliens never found me.
However, that fear still remains in some mild form. Now, I don't go burning books anymore (and I admit, I am ashamed that I actually burned it) but I won't watch any movies about alien abductions. What about "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" you ask? Haven't seen it. I'm serious about this. However, "E.T." is an entirely different bag of hammers. To try to right my wrong, over the years I have passively looked for the book that I burned. All I remember was that the title had the word "vanished" or some form of that word and the cover was grey. Not a lot to go on. I took it as a sign that I couldn't find it, like I wasn't meant to see that book again.
Until yesterday. Mandie's site referral and there it was in the February 1985 scholastic. It was called "Vanished!" and it was written by Wayne R. Coffey. Well, I immediately went out to Amazon.com and found the book for $1.29. I bought it. Yes, I did.
Now the adult in me is very excited to see this book again, to finally read it. To finally conquer that damn book. But the ten year old that still lives inside is scared all over again. What if, just WHAT IF it really was a beacon and I merely escaped the clutches of alien hands last time? I might not be so lucky again, to tempt fate like this. I suppose if you never hear from me again, you know why.
I'll try to keep you posted....
No comments:
Post a Comment