30 Day Book Challenge – Day 21

Day 21 – The first novel you remember reading.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day, by Randall Frakes. My mother assures me I read plenty of “novels” before this, but I don’t remember them. Since the title of today’s challenge mentions being able to recall said novel, I’m going with the novelization of James Cameron’s ultimate thrill ride.

Long story short, I was eleven, the film was PG-13, and my mother was a stickler for MPAA ratings.

“If they wanted kids under thirteen to watch the movie, they’d have made it PG.”

You see, in 1989 (two years before Arnold swapped roles from villainous machine to John Conner’s teachable-savior), my wonderful sisters (who’re twelve and fourteen years older than me) took me to see Robocop. Afterward, the only thing I remembered about that movie was the flash of boob during a walk-through of the locker rooms. It was so quick that my oldest sister didn’t have time to cover my eyes. Unfortunately, I went home and told my father about the titty shot. My father, being the dick that he was, told my mother. From then on out, I was a slave to the MPAA.

So, one fateful afternoon, I was walking home from school and had to use the bathroom. I ducked into a convenience store to drain my ween. After leaving the restrooms, I stumbled upon a paperback copy of Terminator 2: Judgement Day, by Randall Frakes that was being sold in a display case beside the cash register. If I couldn’t see the epicosity which was T2, I would read of it. Needless to say, the book rocked. We get a much better view of the characters and their motivations, as we do more insight into the future war. I think I love the book and the movie in equal amounts. I also believe that one story told in two separate mediums started a love for film and literature that would follow me into adulthood and beyond.

Author’s note: These past 21 days have opened up a lot about my past that I didn’t remember until prompted. For the longest time, I thought the first novel I recalled reading was Delores Claiborne, by Stephen King. But it was actually second to Frakes’s terminator novelization. My lapse in memory probably stems from the two years that passed between T2: the novel in 1991 and when King released Delores in 1993. Or maybe it’s because King’s story of a woman who got away with a murder she actually committed but then charged for one she didn’t commit is still as fresh in my mind as when I first read it. I can still hear her husband scratching at the well’s walls…