I know this story is too big for this blog, but as I'm considering how to tell it, I don't see how the story could be made smaller. Maybe I'll surprise myself, and this won't be too big after all. Perhaps it just seems big in my mind because all of this happened when I was in 7th grade, and everything looks bigger through a child's eye.
Okay, time to drift back to junior high and revisit a childhood hero of mine, even if it that's hard to do.
A Room With A View
In my small world, the most popular comedians in 1981 were Bill Murray, Steve Martin, and Robin Williams. Bill was singing "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" in Stripes, Steve had an arrow shot through his head, and Robin was an alien from the planet Ork. Watching these professional comedians on TV or in a movie was a lot of fun, but that doesn't mean comedy is restricted to professionals. I know people who have made me laugh longer and harder than any movie ever could.
For a couple of years I had a friend at school named Eric Johnson. Eric had wispy, blond hair, broad shoulders, and I cannot remember ever seeing him angry. We were in the same class in 6th grade, and we went to bible camp together the next summer. Like a lot of my classmates, Eric lived on a farm in the country, and he was usually too busy working it to have friends visit.
One fall day my mom surprised me with the news that Eric's mom had called, and I was invited for the afternoon. Once I got there, Eric excitedly gave me the tour of his farm's buildings. We also spent several minutes reverently studying his father's Kenworth Semi-truck before he drove it off to work.
After watching the truck roar to life and rumble away down the gravel road, we went inside his house to mess around. Eric quickly led me up the stairs to the bedrooms, and he giggled, "You gotta see this!" "This" as it turns out, wasn't in Eric's room like I suspected, "this" was in his older brother's room.
Todd Johnson was a junior in high school (an adult to us), and his room wasn't like anything I had seen before. There might as well hung a sign above the doorway proclaiming, "Here Be Monsters!" because in the world of Todd Johnson, bloody vampires, the walking dead, and creatures from beyond stalked the land. I didn't even know where to stop and look. Every square inch of the walls was plastered with posters, pictures, and hand made collages of severed hands, reanimated brains, and the frothing mouths of demons.
I was in awe. No room was ever cooler than this.
The ceiling light had a pull-chain switch, and a headless Barbie doll dangled from the end of the chain. Half expecting an explosion, I tentatively tugged on Barbie's feet, and the light clicked on. You could now see that rubber masks and issues of Fangoria, Gorezone, and Famous Monsters of Filmland covered the floor.
"Here! It's right here!" Eric reached into Todd's dresser drawer and pulled out a picture that would take my breath away. Giggling, Eric handed me the image of a vampire baring her fangs as blood from her mouth ran down her neck and over her... well, let's just say she was topless. I was stunned into silence. In that picture was everything a twelve-year-old boy ever wanted to see. In the span of three minutes, Eric's older brother had reached champion status.
"C'mon!' Eric ripped the picture out of my hands and tossed it back in the drawer. "Let's get out of here before we get caught."
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