I Was a Childhood Book Slut

When I was a little boy off visiting my granny in the wilds of East Texas for summer vacation, the only thing that saved me from terminal boredom was my promiscuous love of reading. She had stacks of Readers Digest going back to before I was born, McCalls, the complete works of Zane Grey (who delivered the most convoluted, bizarre plots I have ever come across. And evil polygamous Mormons. Yay!) and a substantial collection of odd paperbacks that wandered in from god knows where. I read them all. If it was printed on paper, in English, and didn't actually involve auto mechanics, I read it.

There was also a lot of True Confession-type magazines that I believe my trashy female cousins had left behind. They were stuffed with advertisements for feminine hygiene products that made me vaguely uneasy and mail order frilly ruffled curtains that matched the frilly ruffled bedspread and the frilly ruffled vanity table skirt that completed your mantrap boudoir. To this day, I connect that kind of decorating excess with sanitary napkins.

The stories baffled me. I would read them over and over again, thinking I was missing something. Rife with euphemisms and Random Capitalization, I caught on that they were discussing something important, but could never figure out what exactly they were sniffing around about.

They all had titles like "I Married a Wrong One" "One Night of Sin, a Lifetime of Regret" "I Promised Myself 'He'll Never Know'"

One I particularly remember was "My Husband Was a Stranger to Me." I thought it meant they were not well acquainted when they wed; turned out the marriage was never consummated. Or rather, in the required style, Never Consummated, even though the writer shied away from such blunt language as that. I believe the bride delicately complained her bed was "empty." From scraps of the story I retain, it's possible the groom was a homo. But she cried and he rushed to her waiting arms and everything was okay. Fade to black. The End.

I also remember arguing with my mother that these tales were true, true, true. The cover said so. Sometimes I'm amazed I managed to survive my own naivete.