(no subject)
Halloween of 1990 was suitably overcast and as if that weren't perfect enough, my second-grade class had a party that involved telling scary stories with the lights off. This was before I had developed my fear of public speaking, so I didn't hesitate to share several tales, many of which, I probably claimed, had happened to me personally or to someone I knew, because true stories are always the best and who cares about facts when you're telling a good story?
It was my personal goal to give every other kid in that class nightmares.
One story I told was that moth-eaten classic about the girl who always wore a ribbon around her neck. Her boyfriend was like, "What's up with that ribbon you always wear around your neck?" and she was all, "Ribbon what ribbon haha I don't have a ribbon that I always wear around my neck don't you ever ask me about that ribbon again you prick." So the guy lays off about the ribbon and they get married and grow old together and then when she's dying, she says, "'Kay, you can take this tattered-ass thing off me now," so then he unties the ribbon and her head falls off. This makes zero fucking sense, but it terrified the shit out of every child I ever told it to. I considered it my pièce de résistance. Scaring people was great. (Comforting them when they were still scared later was a bore.)
One of the other kids had brought in a book called More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Several classmates chimed in that it was the creepiest thing they'd ever read. The teacher was intrigued by its strange illustrations and read some of the stories to us. One of them was definitely "The Bed by the Window."
As you may recall, "The Bed by the Window" is about an old man whose nursing home roommate has the titular sweet-ass bed by the window. The roommate is always falling all over himself about what a great view he has. Instead of asking to be put in a wheelchair and pushed over to the window where he, too, could see these things, the old man very reasonably decides to murder his roommate, because I guess if your roommate dies, you get dibs on the bed they croaked in. So the old man kills his roommate and moves into his death-riddled bed, only then it turns out that the roommate was full of lies and the window faces a brick wall, because this nursing home is in Hell, I guess.
The index for every volume of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories trilogy lists folk tale origins and sometimes even the lessons a young person could glean from the piece. I don't remember what the index lists as the moral of this particular story. Don't knock your roommate's heart pills away from him when he's having an attack so you can look out his window all day, maybe, or don't covet what someone else has unless you like brick walls all up in your grill. But there is food for thought offered in the comments section of this video retelling of the story. Highlights include the idea that the old man was brick-rolled, that God was punishing him for murder by keeping him from seeing all the great things his roommate saw, that the roommate actually had dementia, that the old man was so mad about the window that he died of constipation a few days.
Maybe it was that cheerful tale of geriatricide or this gentlemen's pre-Sixth Sense existential crisis or maybe just this illustration
from the story about the bride who accidentally locked herself in an attic trunk on her wedding day. Maybe I just wanted to know if her husband's dental plan would extend to cover her, as well, and if she intended to get her nightmare razor teeth fixed after the honeymoon. Whatever the case, I begged and begged for that book for Christmas. And I got it! And it was love.
I mean...
Didn't he star in Herbie Hancock's video for "Rockit"?
But one of the most evocative and beautiful images to come from these books (and the cover of my edition of More Scary Stories), hands down:
Remember the story, though? Candidate for World's Worst Mom over here. "My angelic children acted like pretty standard annoying children for a brief period once instead of, like, the entirety of their stints as toddlers, so I abandoned them and sent a monster in as a replacement mother." Still, that story--and even more so, the illustration--capture so much about this series. I'd hang a poster of this on my wall to this day.
I received the third installment for my birthday the following year. Remember "Harold"?
This was before I had moved into The Baby-Sitters Club's scary story offerings (Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook, anyone?), so I didn't have Dawn Schafer telling me how to get my creep on by curling up with scary books during thunderstorms. That's exactly what I did, though. I was just musing over this and wondering to myself, is it learned behavior? How does a eight-year-old put those two things together, especially when she isn't even afraid of thunder and lightning?
Even now, when I hear those rumbles in the distance, I want nothing more than to sit in my room, lit only by the dim, gray sky of the gathering storm, and lose myself in something to give me goosebumps. And if it could include the living room of my house in Florida, our 1970s-print couch, the blanket my mom made for me when I was eight, and the freezer humming off and on in the corner of the dining room nearby, that'd be great, thanks.
It was my personal goal to give every other kid in that class nightmares.
One story I told was that moth-eaten classic about the girl who always wore a ribbon around her neck. Her boyfriend was like, "What's up with that ribbon you always wear around your neck?" and she was all, "Ribbon what ribbon haha I don't have a ribbon that I always wear around my neck don't you ever ask me about that ribbon again you prick." So the guy lays off about the ribbon and they get married and grow old together and then when she's dying, she says, "'Kay, you can take this tattered-ass thing off me now," so then he unties the ribbon and her head falls off. This makes zero fucking sense, but it terrified the shit out of every child I ever told it to. I considered it my pièce de résistance. Scaring people was great. (Comforting them when they were still scared later was a bore.)
One of the other kids had brought in a book called More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Several classmates chimed in that it was the creepiest thing they'd ever read. The teacher was intrigued by its strange illustrations and read some of the stories to us. One of them was definitely "The Bed by the Window."
As you may recall, "The Bed by the Window" is about an old man whose nursing home roommate has the titular sweet-ass bed by the window. The roommate is always falling all over himself about what a great view he has. Instead of asking to be put in a wheelchair and pushed over to the window where he, too, could see these things, the old man very reasonably decides to murder his roommate, because I guess if your roommate dies, you get dibs on the bed they croaked in. So the old man kills his roommate and moves into his death-riddled bed, only then it turns out that the roommate was full of lies and the window faces a brick wall, because this nursing home is in Hell, I guess.
The index for every volume of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories trilogy lists folk tale origins and sometimes even the lessons a young person could glean from the piece. I don't remember what the index lists as the moral of this particular story. Don't knock your roommate's heart pills away from him when he's having an attack so you can look out his window all day, maybe, or don't covet what someone else has unless you like brick walls all up in your grill. But there is food for thought offered in the comments section of this video retelling of the story. Highlights include the idea that the old man was brick-rolled, that God was punishing him for murder by keeping him from seeing all the great things his roommate saw, that the roommate actually had dementia, that the old man was so mad about the window that he died of constipation a few days.
Maybe it was that cheerful tale of geriatricide or this gentlemen's pre-Sixth Sense existential crisis or maybe just this illustration
from the story about the bride who accidentally locked herself in an attic trunk on her wedding day. Maybe I just wanted to know if her husband's dental plan would extend to cover her, as well, and if she intended to get her nightmare razor teeth fixed after the honeymoon. Whatever the case, I begged and begged for that book for Christmas. And I got it! And it was love.
I mean...
Didn't he star in Herbie Hancock's video for "Rockit"?
But one of the most evocative and beautiful images to come from these books (and the cover of my edition of More Scary Stories), hands down:
Remember the story, though? Candidate for World's Worst Mom over here. "My angelic children acted like pretty standard annoying children for a brief period once instead of, like, the entirety of their stints as toddlers, so I abandoned them and sent a monster in as a replacement mother." Still, that story--and even more so, the illustration--capture so much about this series. I'd hang a poster of this on my wall to this day.
I received the third installment for my birthday the following year. Remember "Harold"?
This was before I had moved into The Baby-Sitters Club's scary story offerings (Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook, anyone?), so I didn't have Dawn Schafer telling me how to get my creep on by curling up with scary books during thunderstorms. That's exactly what I did, though. I was just musing over this and wondering to myself, is it learned behavior? How does a eight-year-old put those two things together, especially when she isn't even afraid of thunder and lightning?
Even now, when I hear those rumbles in the distance, I want nothing more than to sit in my room, lit only by the dim, gray sky of the gathering storm, and lose myself in something to give me goosebumps. And if it could include the living room of my house in Florida, our 1970s-print couch, the blanket my mom made for me when I was eight, and the freezer humming off and on in the corner of the dining room nearby, that'd be great, thanks.