Part V of EW’s weeklong tribute to the master of the macabre.
Stephen King celebrated his 70th birthday, on Sept. 21.
Growing up as a child in the 1980s, I wasnt much of a reader.
Credit: ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/Getty Images; Courtesy Paul Tremblay
I was a shoot-free-throws-in-the-driveway-pretending-I-was-Larry-Bird or watch-the-new-fangled-cable-TV-all-afternoon kind of kid.
I knew who Stephen King was as many of the adults in my extended family were his constant readers.
The message to the kid-me was clear: King was the serious scary stuff.
Knopf
And I wasnt yet worthy.
My scoliosis worsened throughout high school despite the torturous plastic and metal back brace in which I slept.
That entire summer before college, I couldnt do much beyond sitting on a pillow-padded rocking chair.
Was I going to do nothing but watch TV all summer?
I was newly 18 and I had a new spine (literally and figuratively!
), so I thought I could handle somethingadultlike reading a 1,200 page Stephen King book.
Knopf
Utterly terrified, I chucked the book across the room.
Fast forward four years.
I graduated college with a mathematics degree (yes, math!)
Ive since read many of Stephens books more than once, but notThe Stand.
I dont need to read it again.
Its all there inside me.
A few months later it was the fall of 1993 and I headed off to the University of Vermont.
At the end of those two years, I earned a masters degree in mathematics.
I was to be a lifelong reader, and eventually, a writer.
Empathy is difficult and messy and its the best part of us when we let it be.
Lets fast forward one more time.
Twenty-some odd years after my initial Stephen King binge, my novelA Head Full of Ghostswas published.
I sat down and I read the tweet (like two thousand times).
Well, at least not on the first try.
