by R. L. Stine
Something touched my face! What was it? Was it the attic monster?
No. A cobweb.
I continued to climb. The attic floor was dusty and uneven. I looked around. It was a total disappointment. No trunks. No moose head.
What a letdown!
The only thing in the entire place seemed to be a clothes rack. Mom’s out-of-style dresses and some of Dad’s old work pants. I started to turn around when I noticed a small black case on the floor.
I walked over and picked up the case. It was coated with dust. The handle squeaked.
I carried the case over to the stairs and sat down. There was a lock on the case.
I snapped it open.
I stared into that small black case. But I had no idea what an important discovery I had just made.
What is it?” I heard Bill whisper. He was standing at the bottom of the attic stairs peering up. “What did you find up there?”
“It’s a portable typewriter,” I told him. I struck a couple keys with my index finger. “And it works.”
I was so excited about finding the typewriter! I started down the attic stairs. But the figure looming in the doorway below made me hesitate. It wasn’t my brother. And it certainly wasn’t a cobweb.
It was my mother. Her arms were folded and she was frowning.
“I warned you about the attic,” she said. “The floors are rotting. It isn’t safe.”
What could I say? I was caught.
My mother sent me to my room.
The good news is, she let me keep the typewriter. I started typing immediately. With one finger.
I suppose later, when I got to high school, I should have taken a typing class and learned to type with more than one finger. But it was too late. I was already typing at lightning speed with just one finger. So I stuck with it.
I might have developed the fastest finger in the Midwest. But at seven years of age, I wasn’t quite ready to write books. I didn’t start my first book until I was twelve.
In the beginning, I wanted to draw comics.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved comic books. I wanted in the worst way to draw some myself. And that’s how I did draw them—in the worst way! It took me a long time to accept the fact that I cannot draw at all. But I didn’t let it stop me.
From the moment I found that typewriter, I began writing and illustrating my own magazines and comics.
I wanted to draw comics like EC Comics. EC was a small company that put out horror and science fiction comics. And Mad. Mad was an EC comic before it became a full-size magazine. I thought Mad was hilarious, and I inhaled the grossness of EC’s Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. I loved them.
My mother had a different opinion. She said these comics were trash. She wouldn’t let me bring them in the house. I was an unhappy kid until I realized they had Mad and all my other favorites at the barber shop.
“I thought you just got a haircut,” my mother said every Saturday morning when I asked her for a dollar to pay the barber.
I spent just about every Saturday reading in the barber shop. Not until I’d read all the way to the inside back cover did I finally climb into the chair for my usual ten-second trim. I spent so much time at the barber shop that the barber started calling me “son.”
When I wasn’t getting my hair cut, I became a one-person magazine factory.
I think The All New Bob Stine Giggle Book was my first magazine. I still have one copy of this masterpiece. Typed on the old typewriter, it is three by four inches, tiny compared to newsstand magazines.
The Giggle Book is ten pages thick, but has only five pages of text. For some reason, I didn’t type on both sides of the paper. This miniature magazine is filled with jokes and riddles. The best joke in the issue, I think, is this one:
Ted: I saw you pushing your bicycle to work.
Ned: I was so late I didn’t have time to get on it.
HAH, For Maniacs Only!! came out in 1956. The blurb on the cover promised, “All in this issue, Howdy Deedy, The 64-Thousand-Dollar Answer, and Dragnut.” Like Mad, I was spoofing popular TV shows. (Howdy Doody was a popular kids’ show. The $64,000 Question was a quiz show, and Dragnet was a police show.) I drew the pictures myself.
I spent hours and hours on these little magazines. My tools included the typewriter, pens, pencils, crayons, tape, paste, and scissors. The stapler was probably the highest-tech piece of equipment I had.
We didn’t have computers when I was a kid. I would have gone completely bananas with a Mac and a design app!
It was a big job, making one copy of each issue. And that’s all I made—one copy. After showing off my creation to Bill, I took the latest issue to school and passed it around for my friends to read.
I tried to poke fun at everyone in my magazines. People in general and no one in particular. Harvey Poobah, for instance, was a character I made up. In FEEF magazine, “Harvey Poobah fell off the Empire State Building and lived. (Until he hit the ground.)”
In another issue, I warned my readers that “more accidents occur on the basement steps than in any other place in the house. Play it safe! When you go down to the basement, don’t use the steps!”
I experimented with titles. Ming was one of the more unusual. I also used Tales to Drive You Batty, Whammy, and Stine’s Line. One of my favorites was BARF. BARF consisted of funny captions placed under pictures I cut out of magazines.
When I was in junior high, I created From Here to Insanity. It lasted seven issues. And it was typed on both sides of the paper. The second issue spoofed Robin Hood. I called him “Robin Hoodlum.” (Alert readers of “Robin Hoodlum” will notice some spelling and punctuation goofs, and maybe some odd uses of CAPITALS, but I decided to show it to you here just the way I wrote it. That’s because it isn’t any more fun looking up the rules in a grammar book now than it was when I was in school.)
“ROBIN HOODLUM by Bob Stine”
ROBIN: “Ah, Maid Marian what say you to taking a walk with me thru Sherwood Forest? What say you?”
MARIAN: “Not me! The last time we walked together I ended up carrying you home!”
ROBIN: “Well how was I to know I’d step on some cactus!”
MARIAN: “CACTUS in Sherwood Forest?! Baloney!”
LITTLE JOHN: “What sayeth thou to entering the archery contest tomorrow, Robin Hoodlum?”
ROBIN: “Fine. A good idea. Come Maid Marian, I’ll practice shooting apples off your head!”
MARIAN: “Oh no you don’t! The last time we tried that I had to have eighteen stitches!”
ROBIN: “Well, I’d forgotten to chalk my bow! It can’t happen twice in a row!”
MARIAN: “I know it won’t. I won’t be there!”
As you can see, I was a weird kid. I spent so many hours—such a large part of my childhood—alone in my room, typing … typing … typing … just as I do today!
Several months before I turned thirteen, I began preparing for my Bar Mitzvah. That’s an important ceremony in the Jewish religion. I was in my room practicing all the long Hebrew songs and prayers I would have to sing in temple, when Mom came in. She said she wanted to talk to me. She and Dad wanted to know what I wanted as a Bar Mitzvah gift.
I didn’t even have to think about it. “A new typewriter,” I told her immediately.
My parents really came through. They bought me an office-type machine. We’re talking a heavy-duty typewriter here. It was perfect. I used that typewriter for years.
I know, I know. Most kids want more exciting presents than a typewriter. But I was definitely weird. By this time, I was really hooked on writing.
School friends began pestering me to see the latest issue of my funny magazines. They read them, then passed them around. Then they returned them to me.
I loved watching my friends read my magazines in class. The most fun of all was when a kid laughed out loud and got caught by our teacher.
For example: the time I was in class with several of my friends. The kid
next to me had a copy of From Here to Insanity. He was reading an article called “How to Read This Magazine in Class!”
The kid was laughing.
“Young man, you’re disturbing the entire class!” said the teacher.
“It’s his fault!” my friend told her. He pointed at me.
I looked around innocently. Who is he pointing at? I wondered.
That’s when my friend, trying to get rid of the evidence, stuffed the magazine into my hand.
“You, Bob Stine,” the teacher said. “Come here!”
It was an order.
The moment I reached her desk she snatched my magazine. “What is this?” she demanded. She held up the copy of From Here to Insanity and began reading.
She looked me up and down. “You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?” she asked.
“Well …” I started. Modestly.
“You think THIS is funny?” She read aloud from the article “How to Read This Magazine in Class!”: “If the teacher asks what you’re reading, say it is a pocket dictionary!”
I laughed. The entire class laughed.
“Bob,” said the teacher, “I’m marching you down to the principal’s office right this minute!”
So, Bob, what do you want to be when you grow up?” the principal asked me when we were both settled comfortably in his office. I think he was a lot more comfortable than I was.
“A school principal,” I told him.
“Very funny, Bob.” He sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Graduate me early?”
No such luck. Actually, the principal and my teachers didn’t really know what to do with me. I was a good student. I always got A’s and B’s. But I was never very interested in school. I was a lot more interested in my writing.
At home, my brother and I kept on telling scary stories at bedtime. One night, Bill would terrify me. The next night, one of my twisted tales would frighten Bill out of his wits.
There wasn’t any shortage of material. If I wanted to give us both goosebumps, I retold the story of the dead guy under the pile of rocks.
The pile of rocks behind our house.
The rocks were there when we moved in. Our new backyard wasn’t nearly as big as the one at our old address. There was a low wooden fence separating our property from the woods in back. In the middle of the woods stood a tall mound of smooth, white rocks.
Who piled the white rocks in the woods? How did they get there? Nobody seemed to know.
But all of us neighborhood kids believed one thing for sure. There was a dead guy underneath.
During the day, we used to hang out on the rock pile. But after dark, no one would go near it. So when I told Bill scary stories, I used the rock pile at night as a setting. I made up the dead man’s entire life history. Right up until the moment the man was murdered.
In the very room where Bill and I now slept!
Then one day the rocks were gone. So were the trees. A real estate developer cleared the lot and started to build a house.
No one mentioned finding a dead guy. I guess they just hauled him away.
Or buried him under the house …
We never talked about it. Never mentioned the mysterious white stone mound again. But sometimes I think about it when I start to write a new book.
When we ran out of scary stories, Bill and I would go to the movies. We loved scary movies when we were kids. We would go to the movies every Sunday afternoon after Sunday school.
The theater was always filled with kids. We’d usually see a double feature—two movies and some cartoons and shorts. The horror films were always in black and white.
Our favorite films were the ones with big monsters in them. The monsters usually lived in underground caves. An atomic bomb blast would set them free. And they would stomp all over Washington, DC, and other cities and smash them flat.
When the monsters attacked, my brother and I would scream and kick the seats. All the kids in the theater would go nuts.
Two of my favorite horror films were It Came from Beneath the Sea and Night of the Living Dead. Do those titles sound a little familiar to you? Sometimes when I’m trying to think up good titles for my books, I remember those scary movies my brother and I loved so much.
A while ago, one of my readers sent a very funny letter. He asked: “When you were a kid, were you called a nerd or a geek?”
Tough question to answer.
I guess I was pretty nerdy. For one thing, I was a member of the high school marching band, which was pretty uncool in those days.
My instrument was the clarinet. And it gave me a little problem. You see, I couldn’t march and play at the same time. Oh, I was a good enough musician. In a chair. But if I marched, I had to concentrate on my feet. Which meant I couldn’t think about my music!
So what did I do? I quit the band and joined the chorus. At least the chorus didn’t have to march as it sang!
At my school in Bexley, kids hung out in different groups, as at most other schools. There were the popular kids, the smart kids, the athletes, the techies, and so on. I never really fit into any of the groups.
I certainly didn’t fit in with the jocks. I was a terribly unathletic kid. I admit it—a total klutz. When I was in fourth and fifth grade, we used to play softball a lot. We had a diamond that stretched over my backyard and two others. All the neighborhood kids played.
We must have played a thousand games. And every single time I came to bat, I grounded out to the shortstop. Every single time!
In any sport, I used to dread the time when the two team captains would choose up sides. I was always the last to be chosen. And the two captains would always argue: “You take him!” “No—you take him!” “No way. You take him!”
I tried playing football. But even though I was always tall, I was a real skinny kid—and I got crushed. I tried playing basketball, and I had no shooting eye at all. I could miss twenty shots in a row—easily.
I suppose my best sport was bowling. But even that was trouble. One day I dropped the ball on my foot and broke my little toe!
When it came to sports, I was mostly good at tuning my TV to the Cleveland Browns playing football. Some people have two left feet. I did sports stuff as if I had three. I couldn’t punt, pass, or kick!
But I loved watching the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians. Today, I’m a Giants and Jets fan. I never miss football on Sunday afternoon no matter how many books I have to write.
Anyway, I didn’t hang out with the athletic kids, or any other group. But I had some really good friends.
In fourth grade, my best friend was a boy named Randy, who lived across the street. Randy and I would spend endless (and I mean endless) Saturday afternoons playing Monopoly on the floor of his room. The games would stretch on for hours, and neither of us would ever come close to winning.
One day, Randy’s cocker spaniel chewed the Monopoly board to pieces. Our games came to an end. And so did the friendship.
In junior high and high school, I had a close friend named Norm. Norm was not shy like me. He was fast-talking and funny. He would go up to strangers on the street and insult them: “Is that really your face, or were you run over by a truck?” Really dumb insults. We thought it was a riot.
Norm played the trumpet, a really cool instrument. Norm would make really rude sounds with his trumpet when the band director was talking. We thought that was a riot, too.
Norm introduced me to jazz music, which I still like. He also kept two flying squirrels in a cage in his bedroom. One day, I bet him they couldn’t really fly. So he opened the cage door, and they came scampering out. They couldn’t fly—but they could leap really well.
We couldn’t catch them. They started leaping and gliding all over the room. After chasing them for an hour, we shut them up in the room and went out to ride our bikes. They may still be there.
My other best friend in high school was a guy named Jeff. I liked Jeff because he was smart and funny—and
because he thought I was smart and funny.
Jeff and I were best friends—and we were competitors. In school, we competed against each other to get the best grades in our class. Jeff almost always won. I liked getting good grades—but I also liked getting laughs. I liked interrupting the class with a joke or a smart remark. It didn’t exactly make me the teachers’ favorite.
Jeff dreamed of someday winning a major political office. Step number one was the presidency of our senior class. I was his campaign manager. I came up with his slogan—KICK THE SCOUNDREL IN!
I drew his posters. I wrote his speeches. I even voted for him. Jeff lost in a landslide.
Jeff and I both had tape recorders. The old-fashioned reel-to-reel kind. After school, we’d drag them to each other’s houses and make comedy tapes on them. We’d make up characters and act out comedy routines.
We thought we were a hilarious comedy team. We’d usually start laughing so hard at our own jokes that we had to turn off the recorders. I’m so glad none of those tapes are still around today. I’d be so embarrassed!
In high school, Jeff had a little car. The two of us would go to a drive-in for lunch every day. In those days, there were dozens of restaurants where you ate in your car. Young women called carhops took your order, then brought the food out on a tray to your car. When I was a kid, we never went inside a restaurant! We always ate in the car.
At our school, you were allowed to drive anywhere you wanted at lunchtime, as long as you got back before the next class period.
Cars were so important to us! The minute we turned sixteen, we would run to take the driver’s license exam. When I was fifteen, I took driving lessons from a guy who came to my house twice a week.
I’ll never forget my first time behind the wheel. I was totally psyched! The instructor showed me how to turn on the ignition. Then he told me to back the car down the driveway. I put the car in reverse, started to back up—and nearly backed over my little sister, who was playing in the driveway!
Bad start.