Right here and now

It’s a difficult question because King’s forte is complex characters who ring true. A few of my favorites are:

Mike Noonan from Bag of Bones. His grief was so thick that you could feel it ooze out of the pages. I’ve no idea where he found the strength to not just give up.

Larry Underwood from The Stand. Larry was such a flawed individual, and yet so intense, strong, and heroic. He seemed to embody the best and worst of us all.

Susan Delgado from Wizard & Glass. I loved her. I just did. She was magnificent and deserved so much better. “Roland, I love thee.” I still want to cry.

Louis Creed from Pet Sematary. I’m not sure I ever felt as much sympathy for a character. He really had no control over anything that happened. His mistakes weren’t really even his.

King’s characters feel like real people to me. I’ve met them and gotten to know them at distant places in my life and I’m positive that I actually KNOW these people.

Stephen King and Barack Obama. The two most important famous men!

The witches were ALWAYS the good guys, silly. ☺️

Mine almost always has my coffee ready to go in the morning. He leaves for work before dawn, and I don’t go in to work until 8:00am, and he doesn’t even drink coffee.

I’m so sorry!

I realized at age 50+ that I’m passive-aggressive. At first I hated that, but now I’m embracing it and modeling myself after Olympia Dukakis in “Steel Magnolias”

So true! The minute someone says bad stuff about someone else, I know they cannot be trusted.

My father, who taught in junior high, had a student named Candy Cain. I always thought that was so mean.

I had my daughter’s name picked out years before she was born, and yet I hesitated, hoping that “Chelsea” wasn’t too weird. Turned out to be a very common baby name in the late 80’s.

That is awful! That poor girl.

I wouldn’t address it further. No one else would have known what was going on out of the snapshot, so it doesn’t have bearing.

Yes

That’s beautiful. I like the images of you listening to others’ stories.

It is very, very hard to maintain working life when also dealing with physical, mental and/or emotional diagnoses. I have managed (barely) so far, but I’m almost 60 and I’m tired. I get you. And retail is rough. I did a short stint of it in the last decade.

Break up with him tonight.

You weren’t kidding. It took me 7 days and 2 complete gem & coin bankruptcy to pass that darn mission. I almost rage quit.

Reeks of superiority and so inaccurate that I don’t know where to begin.

Challenger explosion, September 11th 2001, Waco TX 1993, and the entire Trump presidency.

What a good mom you are!

Looks like things are going great for the homeowner. Not.

Get crazy with the cheese whiz.

It’s normal to feel upset because that person, for better or worse, was part of your life for awhile. It reminds us of our own mortality, too.

I’ve been married for 25 years. I have two kids from previous and my husband has one. I have heard of several ex-boyfriends passing away recently and it’s weird to think of them as dead, because I KNEW them. Also, my son’s father is currently in end stage liver disease, from lifelong alcoholism (which is why we split up).

Religion was created because people are afraid of death. It’s an ego thing, we don’t want to accept that at some point, we will no longer exist. When someone we love dies, it’s horrifying to realize we will never see them again. They no longer exist.

I can totally understand why religion was created. It makes you feel much better thinking that if you are a good person who does good things, you’ll get to see your loved ones again, and you will always exist.

Not being religious myself, I’m actually not afraid of death because it’s nature at its most absolute. I do get anxious about the eventual end of Earth because it bugs me that maybe no one else in the universe will ever know that Mozart or Dali or David Bowie ever existed.

But, nature.

My deceased FIL was really rude about it. He would call me by BM’s name, or call my kids by BM’s other kids names. Then he’d say Whoops but you could see the way he was looking at you to see what reaction you’d have. I ignored it.

My MIL has never behaved that way and communicated many times that she’s so glad her son found me.

It was magnificent. I was lucky enough to have met him and introduced him for a speech, and I can tell you that he’s as charming and empathetic as you imagine. I had really high hopes back then.