This Is A True Story

[ER]

You guys ever read The Haunting of Hill House? Very few books have ever impressed me that much.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”

 

[RCMerchant]

I first read Shirley Jackson in 1973. I was 11!
Still my favorite author.

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”
And no- it's not sci-fi, it's Shirley Jackson.

[Gabriel Knight]

One time I was driving up South Mountain on the "S" turns of South Orange Ave about 45 mph.  45 mph is fast to take those sharp turns and I had three friends in the car with me.  It was a 1964 Chevy Malibu, and though old and decrepit, it handled very well, even if I was driving drunk.  I expect we were all drinking and avoided any problem.  They vowed to never drive with me again.  

You were killed that night, John, and the illusion of all the years since have been part of your dying vision. That's why wherever you go you keep seeing a small red-haired girl holding a black balloon. It's also why food has lost its taste, and smells are not what they used to be. Maya has replaced Gaia, and your heartbeat is only an echo. Be sure to watch out for open elevators, and beware laughter that sounds through closed lips. It might also explain why you believe yourself to be in New Jersey.

This thread went full M. Night Shyamalan.

[indianasmith]

Of course we both have read THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.  Great writer SHIRLEY JACKSON.  She wrote one of my favorite novels. 

KURT VONNEGUT was a prisoner of war and housed in Dresden's Schlachthaus Funf as his barracks.  The city was fire-bombed while he was there.  The novel is a mixture of horrific memoir, ordinary uninspired life, and science fiction. 

I read Kurt Vonnegut's novels when I was in 8th and 9th grade, and they made a huge impression on me at the time.  However, it's been so long ago now that the plotlines from the 5-6 books I read have all run together in my head.

[ER]

In ninth grade there was this boy named Mike, who liked me, I was at best shrug about him but I would talk to him and once in a while hang out and stuff, apparently giving signals I liked him when I didn't, and one day he said, "Let's make each other mix tapes."

So I said fine, okay, and I made him one, he made me one, and I let his sit for probably at least a week and he kept asking, "Did you listen to it yet?"

Finally I was in the car with my mom (on Friday May 13, 1994---- I just looked the date up in my diary) and I put it on and the first couple songs were good but then in the middle of the tape he stopped with music and recorded himself on there pouring his heart out telling me how he thought I was awesome and he hoped we did stuff together that summer and he went on and on, and I got embarrassed that my mom was hearing this (but I kept listening) and annoyed at this Mike gushing all this out when I barely had any interest at all in him, and finally my mom said that was sweet, but I just thought it was tragically UGH.

I called and told him I listened to his tape, and he got nervously happy sounding and said, "Great! I listened to yours the first day!"

(Awkward.) "Oh, did you?"

"Yeah?! Yours was GREAT! Well....what do you think....of...what was on there?"

I told him the songs were good, (he said, "Uh-huh....?") then I said something like, "You know, I got a hard next few weeks coming up with AP Hell Week finals, so I may not be able to talk that much..."

When I called my cousin and told her and asked how I did getting rid of him, she found my well-intended but heavy-handed destruction of the boy's emotions hilarious and said he was "....sitting at his house crying his eyes out and strangling a pillow."

Took me days to figure out she meant taking his frustrations out on a pillow, not doing some gross boy sex thing.

She said, "Good job, you probably turned him gay."

I learned nothing from the experience, though, and about ten months later dumped another guy I was totally in love with over the phone without quite realizing I was twisting the heart right out of his chest....or even completely realizing I was dumping him. ("You know what we should do? We should keep hanging out and going places and stuff, but just like be, like, we used to be....and all that")

If ever any of you invent a time machine, feel free to go back and b***hslap me. (And bring lottery numbers.)