Weekly Feature: Stories From a Child’s Past: The IT

I have always been a reader and a writer growing up and it until now it has been my escape in a way, an escape especially during my childhood, where I could imagine and create worlds and lose myself in a story that I wrote. For those who follow me on Twitter, many weeks go I came across pages of old writings as a young child, these I will be creating a weekly feature and writing some commentary. I will create these weekly features along with my other topics throughout the week. You will see scan copies of my original works and images to help convey the feature. I hope you enjoy taking a looking into my childhood. Most of what you see are from my childhood, so they may not be grammatically correct and forgive me for that, I never went back and tried to improve or correct my writings. Enjoy the ride through my mind, mostly innocent, some strange, but all trying to be creative.

A Strange Love for Writing and Film

Going Back In Time

This was written on 08/04/1992, 27 years ago, which would have made me about 12 years old, going on 13 soon. I always loved history in the sense of what was going on at that time in my life, being probably in the 7th grade living in Bell Gardens, California, with my grandfather, mother and sister. Those were particular hard years for me going into my teens, but not really having a father figure, although my father in my life, I only saw him on the weekends. At this time in my life, where is what was happening in history that that time:

My Younger Self Love for Film

For those who grow to read my blogs and follow me on Twitter, I am a movie lover, so its not surprise I have probably watch in 1990’s version if “IT” by Stephen King. It was not uncommon for me to watch horror movies, due to my father letting me what whatever I wanted which includes most Horror movies include Halloween, Hell Raiser, Nitemare on Elm Street, to name a few. As a child I don’t know why I had an interest in the weird, but I was drawn to it. I remember a fond member, I used to get up at 1 a.m and watch the Television series Nitemare on Elm Street and would only come on at those times. But this particular night everyone was a sleep, I was staying at my grandparents house and I tried to watch this in the kitchen waking my grandparents who were very upset at the noise and told me to go to bed, my father said nothing.

The “IT” takes my perception of the story of IT, a murderous clown, who most are familiar with the story, being that it has been remade into a more visually appealing movie than the 1990’s television staring the late John Ritter , Jonathan Brandis and living Tim Curry, a film I consider to be the original film, but still find it important not to forget its history especially at the time was made I consider to be a classic.

How I identify with “IT”

Looking at what I wrote, I definitely was short and to the point, not fully displaying the full story about IT but just its death. I guess one of reasons I have identified with this story is because on the characters Ben Hanscom, a slightly overweight young man, who was severely bullied in school and off campus by bullies. Comparing the two versions of Ben, I most associate with the first Ben, because I guess I looked like him at that. I too was stout, overweight, short brown spiky hair and I too was bullied regularly and our ages are inline to what I was going through too. I didn’t have the pleasure of being apart of the “Losers Club” which I had, maybe I would have more confidence today, I did have crushes like Ben at that age, which was Never reciprocated. I took was very sensitive and still to this day, I was called “fatboy” and I was very naive , I think realistically if Penny wise had come along to me, I probably would have followed him too.

I find Ben Hanscom history interesting on Fandom, I encourage you to take a look. It compares both versions of Ben and their differences to the actual book, which sounds to be more the most recent 2017 version, https://stephenking.fandom.com/wiki/Ben_Hanscom.

My Love continues…

The point of this is not some much to speak about the film “IT” but really to display my love for writing at a young age, I believe I have been writing a lot younger, but unfortunately those writings where thrown away or destroyed, because I loved making up stories and I do remember wanting to one day write children’s books. One of the other’s significant memories is the love for small towns, deep in rural areas, which I still have a love for to this day, like in the Town of Derry.

My daughter who is now six appears to have that love as well for Movies and Writing, but I have to be wise not to allow her to watch films that are disturbing and violent, because of her age and because I have no idea how images affect her young mind. I do know she has many interests I do and attempts to mimic me writing and story making. Thank you for being apart of this weekly feature, I hope this features is both fun and interesting to see the importance of writing and encouraging writing at a young age.