Dear Mr. King

Saturday night we hosted Scary Movie Night. SMN started when a couple friends and I were talking about how our friends don’t like watching scary movies. We bonded over the desire to be terrified. Since then, usually once a month, one of five couples hosts a theme night. We’ve eaten fava beans and cianti with Hannibal Lecter, pea soup with Reagan and New England boiled dinner in the Dead Zone. We rallied the troops together for our last SMN. And because Jared makes crispy, greasy, excellent fried chicken and gooey, saltine-topped, homemade macaroni and cheese so we opted for a Southern theme this time. For the movie, I’d never seen Deliverance and from what I’d hear it sounded full of heebie jeebies. Apparently, says Blockbuster, it is an action film that few in the group wanted to watch.

This worked out well because when you aren’t going to see a good group of friends for a long while, you don’t need to watch legendary, banjo-strumming, back-country attack scenes on your last night.

Instead, we ate chicken and biscuits and coleslaw and mac & cheese and corn and salad (the non-Southern kind with cranberries and no mayonnaise) with strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. And they toasted our new adventures with mix-matched glasses of champagne and sparkling strawberry lemonade. We balanced our paper plates on our laps and talked about what we are going to do in Maine. Then we watched Henry and his 4-yr-old friend, Lily, build towers of cardboard blocks (well, she did the building and Henry did the knocking over) while the adults restrained from giving architectural advice. We chatted about the news of the dingo, reviews of the Rufus Wrainright concert and, towards the end while everyone was gathering their things, plans for the next SMN. When the next host asked if anyone had seen the newest Sherlock movie, I realized I didn’t get a vote. I told them they were all required to come to Maine once a year so we could host still. “Yeah right,” they said and laughed. I joked that I would invite Stephen King and we’d watch one of his movies in his honor. They looked a little more serious at that and said they’d fly for him.

 I’m going to write him a letter.