me this, of course, so I dropped the ball. All was saved; I called and left a message on his answering machine, and he emailed the funeral home address and date of the funeral to me over the weekend. Disaster averted! I don’t know if anyone else saw it last night, but there was a show about Stephen King on The Learning Channel. We set the vcr in the bedroom to tape and prepared to watch The Practice in the living room, until we realized it was a rerun. Quickly, we popped over to The Learning Channel and gazed upon Stephen King for an hour. I love that man. You know, no matter your opinion of Stephen King, whether you think he’s a demi-god, or a hack who should shut the fuck up and go away, you have to admire certain things about him. He’s married to the same woman he married right out of college. He didn’t get a little money and dump his wife for a much-younger bimbo with big boobs and a tiny brain. Nope, he’s still with the Tabster, has been for something like 30 years, and I think that’s pretty fucking cool. Anyway, on the show last night, they talked to many people who have worked with him, and people who knew him when he was a kid, and so on. Prudence Grant was his teacher in high school, and Dean Hall was a friend of his from childhood. They showed footage of the high school he went to. It was pretty damn cool, ’cause guess what? I went to the same high school he went to! Of course, he was something like 15 or 20 years ahead of me, but still. I had Miss Grant for "Death and Dying" my senior year! And she loved me, of course, as did every English-type teacher I ever had. Once, we had 20 minutes to kill at the end of class, so she told us to get out some paper and write haiku until the bell rang. I whipped off about 15 haiku in 20 minutes, and she was pretty damn impressed. In fact, she was so impressed that she remembered and raved to my parents about me at parents’ night. Mr. Hall was not only my American History, Psychology and Sociology teacher, I also babysat for he and his wife several times. He grew up with Stephen King, and in one of King’s books he refers to the "Hall twins" – that would be Mr. Hall and his twin, David. I’m surprised neither of them mentioned me during their respective interviews. Steve and me, we’re practically related. At one point, Peter Straub was on, and he went on and on about how Maine is rural and poor and backwoods and people speak with a distinct accent, and I got all pissed. "Nuh uh!" I snarled at the tv. "Sounds like Alabama," Fred noted. I have to wonder if Peter "I suck" Straub has actually been to Maine. We got the Wal-Maht and the Pizza Hut now, y’know. We pahk ah cahs in the pahking lahhhts and some-a them roads ah even paved, too. ‘Cuss, we still pay fuh ahr doctah visits with goats an’ cows, but civilization dassn’t come quick to Maine, ayuh.
Peeved me a tad, it did. "People talk with a distinct accent" indeed.
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