On reading horror in the second grade

My mom was a reader, so I was a reader too.

I learned to read at the same age as the rest of my classmates, but I was better. I liked reading, and I was good at it, so I read a lot. I read all the fucking time: on the way to school, in class when I finished my math work, after school, during dinner, before bed and so on and so forth.

I was really proud whenever my aunts or grandma would tell anyone who would listen that I "read at a college level." When I was eight years old, I thought it was some hot shit. It probably was!

The point is: I was into reading, and I wanted to read the stuff my mom was reading. This book in particular:

My mom wasn't into it. For some reason, she didn't want me reading IT when I was in second grade. But I was persistent, and eventually she said "Fine, read it," thinking I would get bored or move on to other books.

I didn't move on to other books. I read the whole thing, cover to cover, the same way I read my daily reader in school, and the newspaper comics, and anything else I could get my hands on: on the way to school, in class when I finished my math work, after school, during dinner, and so on and so forth.

My teacher (Mrs. Stoner) and my mom both knew I was reading this book, and didn't say anything. They knew it wouldn't do any good. I didn't start reading the book until I got my mom's permission, but I wouldn't leave her alone until she gave me that permission. 

I learned a few life lessons from reading IT in second grade: I learned the word "whore," (though I pronounced it more like "war" because I didn't actually know what it meant.) I also learned I found villains far more interesting than heroes, and I learned that I could be a writer some day. This was a fact that had somehow escaped me until this point. I loved books and spent most of my free time reading, but it didn't occur to me that someone had to write these things. It's not like I thought they just fell out of the sky, fully formed, or burst forth from the forehead of Gentle Zeus.

I just didn't think about it.

I've had this desire to write ever since. Twenty-four years, a degree in journalism, who knows how many half-started stories, novels and essays and a handful of blogs later, and I still have this weird itch to write, and sometimes I just have to sit down and bang out some words until it goes away.

Or at least becomes less irritating. 

I wish I still had my mom's copy of IT. I have one, but I got it at a yardsale when I was a teenager, and it's one of a handful of Stephen King books I've bothered to hang on to. I don't really keep many sentimental things (I've got a good memory, so mostly hanging on to things just seems like a waste of space, and clutter drives me nuts) but I'd like to have her copy of IT.

It was a cheap, paperback copy on her bookshelf in the house I grew up in, and something about that shitty 1980s cover art got inside my head when I was 8 years old.