I think the reason I like stories about vampires is that they are so predictable.
They usually have the same weaknesses, pose the same predictable threat - and are, predictably, scary.
I have been a very avid reader, ever since my first grade teacher taught me to read.
When I was a little kid in first grade, just learning to read, I loved books about: talking animals, dinosaurs, science, - and mysteries, ghosts, and other supernatural monsters.
In pursuit of the latter, I eventually checked out books from the library in first grade that I could
not quite read.
I got my parents to read them to me. The next ones I checked out, I was able to read myself.
These were not books for first-graders, by the way. We are not talking books like Georgie the Ghost or Curious George. These were much longer books written at a level that targeted a preteen audience.
I was more than a few years shy of that myself, but I was determined to be entertained. I loved stories as a kid. There was something magical about being allowed to see something imaginative and wonderful, even if you only were
told
it by listening to it or reading it.
I might be wrong, but I seem to remember reading an Alfred Hitchcock novel or compendium of ghost stories while I was still in first grade. In grade school, I read all kinds of scary stories, including, of course - Edgar Allan Poe.
Unlike most kids, I remember reading Edgar Allan Poe in my elementary school cafeteria - while I was eating. Nothing too gruesome: it was just
Murder dans la Rue Morgue.
I remember two things had me a little bit unsettled. One was,
I cannot understand these French words
. The other was,
This really should bother me a little bit more. How come I can read this while I am eating?
.
Anyway, you will be glad to know that I corrected at least one of the two problems when I enrolled in a French class at my junior high,
Edgar Allan Poe, intermediate school.
Pretty funny, huh?
Yeah, I knew you would think so.
Oh, and you know what the name was of the elementary school where I sat reading one of Poe's bloodiest works while slurping down my 35 cent meal at noon?
Ravensworth!
