Reading Problem

My difficulties have not been confined to my adult years.  I also suffered the usual run of childhood problems ‑-unneighborly elders (no ball playing against their houses), unsympathetic peers (I was always "It"), and treacherous diseases (for vacations only, never during school).  And I had, in addition, another source of trouble: books.

Actually, literature by itself rarely attacked me.  But every now and then some book I was reading would conspire with Fate, and under their combined assault I generally went down for a long count.

There was, for example, my narrow escape from the Horla.  I had been reading of this eerie creature in an anthology of the supernatural.  In it De Maupassant described the Horla as unseen but not unfelt, capable of plucking roses and pulling lamp strings.  Normally I'd have finished this frightening little tale, pondered its open ending (was the hero mad or haunted?), and gone on to the next spook.  But as my eye lit on De Maupassant's last sentence, Fate struck.  A power failure plunged the town into darkness and me into terror.  For my ten-year-old mind could think of but one explanation for the sudden loss of light.  "The Horla!" I shrieked, racing for the door.  "The Horla!"

It was several minutes before my family could calm me, and I read no more stories that night.

But if I can laugh now at the Horla, it's because I escaped its sinister clutches.  I'm much less relaxed about the tsetse flies.

These, as I discovered in Microbe Hunters , bring the fearful sleeping sickness, and I had never read of a crueler disease.  True, it was painless, but it was also slow and incurable.  Bit by bit its victim lapsed into lethargy, and from there into fatal coma.  I pictured myself, then eleven, succumbing to this monstrous ailment.  I would wait listless‑-who knew how long?‑-for the end.  No more handball.  No more swimming.  No more books, even.  I shuddered. 

Had I been indoors as I contemplated this sad demise, I might have shrugged it off and gone on to the next chapter.  But Fate had led me, Microbe Hunters in hand, to read near a meadow of tall grass.  Unidentified flying objects swarmed everywhere, and any one of them might be the dreaded tsetse!  I sped home in horror, fearful of pursuit.

I went to bed that summer night with little of myself exposed.  A long flannel robe tied securely about me, I lay in the dark, alert for any danger.  At a fly's buzz or a mosquito's drone, I'd throw on the light and consider the enemy.

This intermittent lantern show from my room struck my grandmother as strange, and she came to investigate.  "Why are you in a robe?" she demanded anxiously.  "Are you sick?"

I burst into tears.  "Not yet, I think, but I don't know for sure.  I don't even know how long it'll take!"

My grandmother was a woman of infinite patience, long accustomed to the wild flights of my imagination.  Slowly, determinedly, she dragged forth the story.  "Why Ronnie, I'm surprised at you.  And here I thought you were smart!  It's African sleeping sickness, isn't it?  Well, that means it's only in Africa."

"But tsetses can fly.  They could get here."

"Across the Atlantic?  Don't be silly.  It would take them years."

Vaguely I recalled my geography lessons and began to relax.

"Now take off that robe before you do get sick."

"Okay."

"And please," she cautioned, closing my door, "stop reading so much!"

Regrettably I did not take her advice; I continued to read.

More than twenty years later I picked up the evening paper and gazed appalled at a local headline: "Sleeping Sickness Hits Tenth Victim."  Below this, in smaller type, was an even more harrowing statement: "Officials Fear Epidemic."

With a bound I was at my husband's side, the local gazette shaking in my hand.  "They made it!" I gasped.  "They got here!  They're less than twenty miles away!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The tsetses!" I cried, thrusting the paper beneath his nose.  My voice rose in agitation as I explained my concern.

Like grandma, Bill tried logic.  "But this isn't African sleeping sickness, Ron.  This is encephalitis, ordinary brain fever.  You're quite safe."

"But it's insect borne!"

Unlike grandma, Bill does not have infinite patience, and least of all with my wild imagination.  "All right!" he shouted.  "Have it your way!"  He rose to his feet, arms flapping, strange sounds coming from him as he continued.  "Swarms of tsetse flies‑-bzz, bzz‑-are surging from darkest Africa.  Bzz, bzz.  Their sole purpose is to feed on you.  Bzz, bzz.  There is no escape!"

No terror can long diminish a sense of the ludicrous.  In a burst of laughter, I agreed, "All right, all right.  Que sera, sera.  Meanwhile, give me the comics page."  With half the paper tucked under my arm, I headed for the den.

"Why don't you make yourself a drink?" he called after me, calm again now that I was. 

"I will before bed," I promised.  And drink in hand that night, I retired, but checking the screens as I did so.

At this, Bill raised his eyebrows.  "What will be, will be," he reminded me.

"Oh, I'm not denying the power of Fate," I assured him.  "But I believe in precautions, too."

So far they seem to have worked.