Childhood can be a strange thing. You spend countless hours trying so desperately to not only fit in, but to also figure out who you are as an individual. The naïveté found in children can be a good thing at times, but on the flip side, it also sets us up for so much pain.
When you’re a kid, attacks hurt more than they do as an adult, because we’re not capable of seeing anything outside of what that pain does to US. Going into 4th grade, my grandmother tried to set me up for success, buying me a brand new pair of what I thought were every day TMNT shorts. I was so excited to wear them on my first day of school. I was already a pretty emotional kid, stemming from childhood abuse I had survived at the hands of my then-stepfather. I was a pretty fractured child. 4th grade would be different though. I had my Ninja Turtles shorts and the confidence to try to be more outgoing.
I even befriended another kid going into my class, who also adored TMNT. The day went well, until lunch time when I noticed a group of kids whispering in the ear of my new friend. Moments later, he looked at me and laughed. Feeling like I was a part of a joke that I didn’t understand, I got up from the lunch table, threw my lunch away and sat by myself. Like a moment of embarrassing clarity, I looked down and realized that not only were my TMNT shorts not every day shorts, but that I was wearing a pair of boxers, slit in the middle and all. I sat there, at a table by myself, my only “friend” laughing at me from a few tables down and feeling like the entire school year would be hell.
Two things happened that year, that helped me break out of feeling like a worthless human. Two very important moments for me. The first happened after school one day when my grandmother took me to a local McFrugal’s store (a former chain that is sadly no longer around) and told me I could get a toy or something else I’d like. Looking through the toy section, nothing quite stood out, so I made my way to a nearby endcap that was full of discounted books.
Skimming through them, nothing quite gripped me until I came across a book that featured a diamond shape in the middle with a dragon front and center. The green cover and the red lettering (combined with the dragon) immediately stood out to me. I NEEDED this book.
It was, of course, Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon.
It was a moment I’ll never forget. I was enthralled. I read it for two days straight, finishing it in 48 hours. The moment I finished that book, I begged my father to take me to the nearby mall so I could look up any and every Stephen King novel I could get my hands on. I always got good grades in school, so my grandmother always had my back when it came to buying me as many books as my young eyes could read, so when my dad told me he’d get me a few on payday, my grandmother stepped in and said, “I won way too much money at bingo last night, I’ll buy you a few right now and your dad can get more when he can.” I walked out of that store with half a dozen King novels, the most important one, the one that would change my life for the better, was Stephen King’s IT.
Taking IT to school to read kept me going as a kid. I had no friends yet and through that book, I found my friends in Bill, Beverly, Mike, Ben, Richie, Stan and Eddie. The Loser’s Club. They were my friends on the days when I had triggered thoughts of the abuse I lived through just a couple of years prior. I had my own Pennywise, my own Bob Gray, and he fed on my innocence until I felt alone and damaged.
I lived vicariously through those characters. My 4th grade self didn’t understand things like the weird orgy (thank god), so I found a lot of myself in those characters, their experiences, and their fears. For once, I didn’t feel like I was alone, and although my friends were confined to the written word, I laughed the same way I would have with real friends. I related to Eddie and how terrified he was of the world. I related to Ben when all he wanted in life was to be loved and wanted. These characters were me.
That same year, Tommy Lee Wallace’s mini-series adaptation of IT premiered on TV. Already being a massive fan of the book, I watched it and felt even closer to those friends. Thanks to Jonathan Brandis, Seth Green, Emily Perkins, Brandon Crane, Adam Faraizl, Marlon Taylor and Ben Heller, I finally felt like I was part of something. I needed that miniseries in my life at the time. I felt so bullied, the only thing I wanted was for my IT friends to be there. Through that miniseries, they were.
Through finding Stephen King’s IT, I found that I wasn’t alone. It kickstarted a lifelong love of King’s work, and a solace that would eventually come full circle with my own children. Two and a half years ago, my children, Dexter and Dahlia, walked into my room one night and asked my wife and I if they could talk to us. We said sure, shut the door so they would have some privacy, and asked them what it was that they wanted to talk about.
They told us that, while at their bio-mom’s house, they were being sexually assaulted by their half brother. Apparently, this had been going on for quite some time. After instantly going into Papa Bear Mode, my amazing wife and I drove to the police.
We were told to come back the next day.
I filed a restraining order against their half brother and bio-mom, and sat there in the police station while my 7-year old daughter went into detail about what happened to her. Watching my daughter cry while talking to the police is a hurt that I will never forget.
What followed was a year-long court battle to get my kids out of that house permanently and into our home full time. It was the most draining year of my life. Eventually, the verdict was decided.
To this day, I don’t get it.
While I would have significantly more custody, they would still have to go there every other week. The person who was abusing them was still living there. Somehow, the court ruled that they just weren’t allowed to be in the same room alone. They still have to sleep there, under the same roof as that person, two weeks a month.
My daughter has been an emotional wreck for two years now because of this, and much like a 4th grade me, she asked to watch the Andy Muschietti-helmed take on IT. I immediately agreed. She absolutely loved it, and it quickly became her favorite film…
Until IT: CHAPTER 2 came out, that is.
There’s a scene in that film where the Loser’s Club realizes that in order to defeat Pennywise, they need to reduce him in size. How they do that, is by making HIM feel as small as he made them feel. As I sat next to my daughter, that moment was clearly a profound one for her. I saw the tears well up in her eyes, and she began to yell at the TV.
She unleashed every ounce of pain and frustration that she had previously felt that she couldn’t say out loud. She didn’t call him Pennywise during those screams, though. She used the name of her abuser. I held her in my arms and when it was over, she said, “Thank you dad.”
She had found herself in Stephen King’s creations, much like I had.
My son, Dexter, has autism and was mostly non-verbal for the first few years of his life. Now 11, Dexter is pretty high functioning, but he can be socially awkward to other kids. Because of this, he has been the victim of bullying quite regularly. I’ve made school trips. I’ve almost beaten the hell out of kids’ parents. It’s been wild.
He loves action films, and he’s a huge Schwarzenegger fan. He can’t get enough of the PREDATOR universe. While Dahlia has always been a horror fanatic like myself, my son likes to create worlds to articulate his feelings. He created the world of “Prince Reptile” about a boy whose relative stole his identity and Prince Reptile has to find it again.
Talk about metaphors.
One day, while talking about movies and books, my son mentioned the desire to watch 1990’s IT. He had recently watched LEGEND for the first time, and saw that Tim Curry played Pennywise. I showed the film to Dexter and the miniseries quickly became his favorite thing around. He needed a poster, a toy, any and everything that had to do with Tommy Lee Wallace’s version.
Right before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I picked my son up from school and he was noticeably upset. Kids had been making fun of him again, calling him “weirdo” and homophobic slurs used as insults to make him feel like he was lesser. It hurt me to see, and I offered to watch IT with him as a way to let him do something he loved doing.
While watching it, I decided to take it a step further, because I don’t like to do the minimum when my kids are hurting. I try to go big or go home when it comes to making them feel special. It was a shot in the dark, but I reached out to a friend who knew the original cast of the miniseries and asked if there was any way Dexter could get even a hello or a signed photo, if I paid for it. Over the next couple of months, that friend went out of his way to have as many of the cast members send Dexter videos. He did it out of the kindness of his heart, and it still means so much.
What makes IT so special, is how King perfectly captured the feeling of belonging to something, like you fit in with some other kids who might also feel like they were the odd ones. He wrote characters you knew, characters you were, and characters you ARE. The Loser’s Club are at their best when they’re united, when they’re the best support system each other has. They are are their strongest when they’re taking broken individuals, and making them complete. Whether it’s in his legendary novel, the 1990 miniseries, or the two-chapter films of Muschietti, IT remains a story that we can all relate to.
Because though we are broken, we’re able to look into the story and find our crew.
We’re able to find our strength.
It’s Beautiful.
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