long, dragging day,
blazing sun beating the asphalt ragged,
reading for hours at a time, studying for god knows what,
staring at a screen as the words fail to come,
lifting hundreds of pounds of coffee,
my back begins to screech,
i think i breathed in creosote,
i should probably go see a doctor about that,
but that’s a tomorrow problem,
tonight i will sleep,
i will sleep,
i will sleep
The name of it; no. The gist of what it was about; a bit. Actually, I just did a 10 minute Google search and found it, surprisingly enough. I typed in ‘children’s books from the 90’s featuring a monster’. It was called ‘Go Away, Big Green Monster!’ It was the very first book that I was ever able to read by myself.
From what I can remember, it wasn’t all that great or mindblowing of a book. I guess it will always hold a special place in my literary heart due to the fact that it was the book that I learned to read with. It is the book the opened up an entire universe of imagination and hallucination through the art of words.
I read ‘Go Away, Big Green Monster!’ multiple times, almost every night for a period of my childhood. I think it was a bit of a pride thing, like one of those things that kids tend to do on repeat when they’ve accomplished something and the adults in their life make a big deal of it, even though later in life it becomes one of those mundane aspects that no one really cares all that much about. My parents did, in fact, make quite a big deal of it. They were always very supportive and encouraging of those little milestones, and I believe after I was finally able to read my first book by myself we went out and got cake.
I mean, it was not entirely just because of me being able to read a book for the first time. It also happened to be my birthday as well, but I kinda just remember it as being a celebration of my ability to read, or at least that’s how I want to remember it as, and in a way I suppose I’ve been trying to recapture that feeling ever since.
Granted, I don’t even know if I’d go so far as to say that ‘Go Away, Big Green Monster!’ was my favorite childhood book. I’m sure there were plenty others that I enjoyed reading more when I was younger. But for whatever reason, that book stood out, so I guess in my nostalgic-addled mind I decided to write about it. Oh well…
i ran out of shelf space for all the books
in my office,
so now there’s a whole bunch of books in the backseat of my car,
and when i see someone in need,
i toss them a book,
i just hope they’re not
spending all the wealth i give them
on liquor and drugs
Fred Aiken Writing 