Dr. Shock title is deceiving

          He’s been scaring the bejesus out of me since I was a teenager.

            Not the boogie man.

            Or the monster in the closet.

            Those nightmares are run-of-the-mill.

The one who haunts my dreams is Stephen King.

            And I love it.

            The first King book I read was “’Salem’s Lot.” The story line is familiar for long-time “constant readers,” as King describes his fans. A flawed hero joins forces with a young person to combat evil.

But that’s like describing World War II as a back-yard snowball fight.

            One of my favorite scenes in “’Salem’s Lot” is when a young vampire, Danny Glick, comes to one of the heroes in the book, Mark Petrie, and scratches at the window screen, wanting to come in.

            King builds on Petrie’s curiosity and fear and his sadness over seeing his former friend floating outside his second-story room while never losing the terror about a hungry vampire scritch scratching at a screen, hungrily whispering to come in.

            In all of his novels, King gets right to the point without wasting time with boring passages about spring meadows, unnecessary love triangles or people’s wardrobe.

With an economy of words, he quickly reaches into eye sockets, grabs the reader by the eyeballs and never lets go.

            In “The Shining,” I remember being too afraid to turn the page when young Danny Torrance opened the door to Room 237. I didn’t want to turn the page because I was so scared, but I had to because my curiosity was stronger than my fear.

            My curiosity was answered when Danny found a dead woman in the bathtub that comes after him.

            Let’s not begin to mention those moving topiaries from “The Shining.”

            The murdering clown from “It.”

            Or, shudder, the return of toddler Gage from “Pet Sematary.”

            By isolating those scenes, it’s easy to dismiss King as a shock writer. If a reader looks deeper, though, they’ll find King is the ultimate character writer.

Too often, I’ve read books where the main characters accomplish unbelievable feats. While wounded, they can kill the bad guy with one bullet while hanging onto a moving train.

The women are long legged with flowing hair who seduce a man in one scene and save the world in the next, all the while keeping their make up in perfect order.

King’s characters are fleshed out as real people, with flaws and virtues, and that includes the women. He artfully describes the battles they wage with inner demons, from alcoholism to cowardice to a lack of identity.

            Some of my favorite King characters are from “The Stand,” his epic novel about the end of the world. Stu Redman is the main hero, and the constant reader pictures him as a regular guy in a flannel shirt who’s called on to save the world.

            I also like the way Jack Torrance in “The Shining” is written. The movie, starring Jack Nicholson was awful. In the book, though, we see Torrance as a young father who wants to stop fighting his demons yet can’t overcome alcohol’s stranglehold on his life.

            And in all of King’s writing, we eagerly go on a literary journey with him. We might find a dead body in “The Stand,” see a sadistic teenager get the tables switched in “Apt Pupil” or feel the anguish of John Coffee – “like the drink, only not spelled the same” in “The Green Mile.”

            We come to understand hope when we read how Andy Dufresne survives in “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.”

            When a writer makes us believe in redemption, that writer is a true American treasure. And for me, that person is the prolific and incredibly gifted novelist Stephen King.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Just call me "Chicken Little"

            When it comes to hitting the panic button, I’m your ace, clean-up hitter. I go into Def-Con Mode 12 when I don’t know where my sons are or bad weather’s on the way.

My panic overdrive comes into play when my mom’s involved, and my poor brother Joey is the one I turn to in trying to turn the heat down on my nerves.

He was the one I called years ago when Mom answered the phone, dropped the receiver and never came back. He ran to her house, covered in wet paint, and found she’d forgotten about the phone when someone rang the doorbell.

Joey’s also the one I call when Mom doesn’t answer her phone if I call late in the evening or if there’s bad weather. He good-naturedly drives the few blocks over to her house and checks on her.

Even though I have a “Joey parachute,” we the panic driven are uncomfortable when we rocket into hyper-drive.

We tell ourselves to calm down and then the images go through our heads – a wreck on the side of the road and no one discovers our loved ones for hours.

Their getting robbed and left unconscious on the side of the road – the side of the road figures quite prominently in our anxiety attacks – and even worse.

With my mother, she’s also diabetic and I’ve been with her when her blood sugar dropped. To say that was terrifying is an understatement.

Hence the reason I gave her a carton – thank you Costco – of individual-sized packages of peanuts  to carry in her purse.

Plus my sensible sister and sisters-in-law make sure Mom has protein-rich snacks available at all times and regularly restock her fridge and pantry with healthy meals.

And – Mom I love you – but our mother isn’t the best driver. When we were toddlers, we’d cry if we had to get in the car with her because she kept turning into the ditch.

She grew up where there weren’t ditches and then came to Texas where the cars were as big as freight trains. At only five feet tall, she couldn’t really see over the steering wheel, and that’s why we landed in the ditch so often.

Thinking about ditches and picturing her stranded in one, I called Joey when Mom didn’t answer the phone after dinner Friday night and missed our regular Saturday morning phone call.

“Have you seen Mom,” I nonchalantly asked.

“No, didn’t she call you this morning?” he replied.

We realized she hadn’t talked to anybody in a while, so Joey said he’d go to her house and check. She’d been there, but nobody knew where she’d gone.

My smart sister discovered she’d played Candy Crush early in the morning and posted on my niece’s Facebook page, but no word from her for over eight hours and no answer on her cell phone.

By that time, almost all the Hebert siblings were on alert, and we made calls to where she volunteers and to a couple of friends.

When Mom came rolling into her driveway about 5 p.m., Joey and Debra were waiting on her, and I know she felt like a teenager who’d been busted for missing curfew.

So now Mom will make sure her phone’s not on vibrate – she’s disabling that function – and she promised to carry it with her everywhere she goes.

But on this one, I’ll take the blame for pushing the panic button early on. It’s what we panickers do, and until the sky really does fall, just call me Chicken Little.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

... and it's always the red Hawaiian Punch

            My wonderfully talented niece recently posted pictures of the birthday party she created for her 1-year-old daughter. Amber chose the theme of “Alice in Wonderland,” and every detail was covered.

She had green grapes strung through skewers to resemble centipedes. There were lacy sugar flowers and filigreed place cards featuring the whimsical sayings from the Lewis Carroll classic.

Our great-niece was outfitted in a dress worthy of any little girl wishing they were Alice, and everybody was clean at the end of the celebration.

            Looking at the pictures, I found myself thinking back to the days when we had our sons’ birthday parties. I tried to talk my boys into having a party with activities for both girls and boys, but they practically threw themselves on top of their Transformers in horror.

            First, no frilly dresses. Since most of our parties involved playing ninja on the swing set, party clothes were cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. I tried to slip a nice shirt over the birthday boy for the pictures, but that was soon covered with frosting, crushed Chee-tohs and spilled Hawaiian Punch.

Always the red Hawaiian Punch.

Instead of dainty sandwiches and confectionary roses, we had hot dogs roasted over a small campfire in the back yard.

We tried using skewers once, but metal skewers aren’t meant for food – they’re swords and the bearer of said skewer instantly turns into a dastardly pirate. That was the last time we tried that one.

No back-yard hot dog is complete unless it’s covered with lots of catsup and mustard that drips all over the fronts of their shirts or, in a really classy move, smears all over the sleeve of their T-shirt because shirt sleeves are handkerchiefs first, clothing second.

I tried using party hats as favors once, but that didn’t work. The boys punched the pointed end out and pushed the hats up onto their arms to form a gauntlet, aka Iron Man or Spider Man, who thinks he can jump off the top of the slide.

When it comes to cakes, we’ve had everything from a Superman cake to a Batman cake to a Spiderman cake. If you think red Hawaiian Punch is difficult to remove from a T-shirt, try removing red frosting from the front of that shirt.

Or blue.

Or red and blue frosting mixed with red Hawaiian Punch.

My niece had matching napkins for her daughter’s party, and the white tablecloth coordinated perfectly with the tiered plates and platters of finger foods. Both she and her daughter wore beautiful dresses and were clean throughout the whole event.

Forget napkins at a boy party. All we needed was a water hose and boys willing to hold their noses and cover their eyes while we hosed them down from their hair to their sneakers at the end of the shenanigans.

When it came to decorating our house for the boys’ birthday parties, all we had to do was make sure there was an ice chest on the patio filled with juice boxes and frozen ice pops.

Inside, breakable items went on top of the fridge, and we rolled up the rugs because red Hawaiian Punch and cupcakes that accidentally fall frosting side down into the rug leave their mark forever.

Especially red and blue Superman cupcakes that are then smashed into the rug by 5-year-old boys running through your kitchen on the way to the bathroom to fill balloons with water.

When it comes down to it, parents do the best they can to make milestone events special for their children.

No matter if it’s white petit-fours or red and blue Superman cupcakes.

And always the red Hawaiian Punch.

Always.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.