Sympathy from surprising places.

I am reading a book I read when I was 16. I loved it then and I am loving it even more 20 years later. This author has an amazing ability to capture every day life. In the book there is a family they have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. The characters experience so many things I can identify with at my older age. Kids starting school, moving to a new house, funerals, pets, etc. etc. I wanted to share two of my favorites. See if you can can guess who this author is. You might be surprised.

About waiting at home on your kid's first day of kindergarten:

"When the phone rang at a quarter past ten, Rachel raced for it and answered with a breathless "Hello?" before it could ring a second time. Louis stood in the doorway between his office and the kitchen, sure it would be Ellie's teacher telling them that she had decided Ellie couldn't hack it; the stomach of public education had found her indigestible and was spitting her back."

I think we all hold our breaths on our kids first day of school wondering if our kids are cut out for school, or if our kids school is cut out for them. We know they are smart, we know they are special, but will the school see our kids for what they are worth? Will the teacher understand our kid with all their little quirks? After all it took us 5 years to figure them out only to send them off to some stranger to take over and pick up where we left off.

The other scene that captured my reality at least was the following. The father was trying to go out to fly a kite with his 2 year old. With young children this is much easier said than done.

"Gage's neeks [Sneakers] were finally found. . .they were also under the couch. One of Louis's other beliefs was that in families with small children, the area under living room couches begins after a while to develop a strong and mysterious electromagnetic force that eventually sucks in all sorts of litter-everything from bottles and diaper pins to green Crayolas and old issues of Sesame Street magazine with food mouldering between the pages.

Gage's jacket however, wasn't under the couch-it was halfway down the stairs. His red sox cap, without which Gage refused to leave the house, was the most difficult of all to find because it was where it belonged -in the closet. That was naturally, the last place they looked."

It is this realistic deptiction of normal every day life and my ability to identify with it so well that makes it that much scarier when freaky things start happening in their lives. This writer is a genius. I don't like all his books. Many of them however are masterpieces.

What am I reading? Pet Semetary by Stephen King. And just as a warning. . .He is a horror writer and can be disturbing. . .so don't read his book for these scenes. I was just surprised to find them.