Not So Scary After All, by Stephen King

(Note: this has been edited in order to make it classroom-appropriate.)

Our new third-floor apartment was on West Broad Street. A block down the hill, not far from Teddy’s Market and across from Burrets Building Materials, was a huge tangled wilderness area with a junkyard on the far side and a train track running through the middle. This is one of the places I keep returning to in my imagination; it turns up in my books and stories again and again, under a variety of names. The kids in It called it the Barrens; we called it the jungle.

Dave and I explored it for the first time not long after we had moved into our new place. It was summer. It was hot. It was great. We were deep into the green mysteries of this cool new playground when I was struck by an urgent need to move my bowels. “Dave,” I said. “Take me home! I have to push!” (This was the word we were given for this particular function.)

David didn’t want to hear it. “Go do it in the woods,” he said. It would take at least half an hour to walk me home, and he had no intention of giving up such a shining stretch of time just because his little brother had to take a dump.

“I can’t!” I said, shocked by the idea. “I won’t be able to wipe!”

"Sure you will,” Dave said. “Wipe yourself with some leaves. That’s how the cowboys did it.”

By then, it was probably too late to get home anyway; I was out of options. Besides, I was enchanted by the idea of going to the bathroom like a cowboy. I pretended I was Hop-along Cassidy, squatting in the underbrush with my gun drawn, not to be caught unawares even at such a personal moment. I did my business, and took care of the cleanup as my older brother had suggested, carefully wiping with big handfuls of shiny green leaves. These turned out to be poison ivy.

Two days later, I was bright red from the backs of my knees to my shoulder blades. My groin turned into a spotlight. My butt itched all the way up to my ribcage, it seemed. Yet worst of all was the hand I had wiped with; it swelled to the size of Mickey Mouse’s after Donald Duck bopped it with a hammer, and gigantic blisters formed at the places where the fingers rubbed together. When they burst, they left deep divots of raw pink flesh.

For six weeks I sat in lukewarm starch baths, feeling miserable and humiliated and stupid, listening through the open door as my mother and brother laughed and listened to Peter Tripp’s countdown on the radio and played Crazy Eights.

Character Description

Stephen King once described his teacher like this:

My new teacher was Mrs. Taylor, a kind lady with grey Elsa Lanchester— Bride of Frankenstein hair and protruding eyes. “When we’re talking, I always want to cup my hands under Mrs. Taylor’s peepers in case they fall out,” my mom said.

(If you look at the image above, you can see Elisa Lanchester.)

Your Turn

Exercise

My new teacher was Mrs. Taylor, a kind lady with grey Elsa Lanchester— Bride of Frankenstein hair and protruding eyes. “When we’re talking I always want to cup my hands under Mrs. Taylor’s peepers in case they fall out,” my mom said.

Your turn: You can think of someone you know or make something up. Copy Stephen King's passage but plug in your own words to make a new description.

1. Make up a person:

The bus driver...

My grandfather...

The cashier...

2. Think of, or make up a feature that stands out.

Example:

The bus driver...frizzy hair
My grandfather... thick eyebrows
The cashier... different colour nail polish on each nail

3. Think of what you can compare the feature to:

The bus driver...frizzy hair (like cotton candy, or Albert Einstein, or a poodle that's just been blow-dried)

My grandfather... thick eyebrows (We'll do this together)

The cashier colourful nail polish (We'll do this together)

4. Put it together in a sentence:

The bus driver had Albert Einstein hair that puffed out on each side of his face.
The bus driver had hair as light and fluffy as cotton candy.
My grandfather had thick caterpillar eyebrows.
The cashier wore a different colour nail polish on each finger--ten skittles tapping on the register.

5. Add a sentence or quote that emphasizes that feature:

The bus had Albert Einstein hair that puffed out on each side of his face. I had to hold back the urge to squish it with my fingers.
Ken, our bus driver, had blond Albert Einstein hair. It puffed out like cotton candy on each side of his face. My friend Sasha often said, "If I were him, I'd dye my hair pink."
The bus driver had cotton candy hair that puffed out on each side of his face. I pictured it turning into a syrupy mess when it rained.
Each fingernail of the cashier was painted in a different colour--red, green, purple, pink, as if she had opened a package of markers and tried out each one. When I looked at her hands, all I could think of was jelly beans.