"A two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face"

How Stephen King got prepared for literary criticism

"There was a stream of babysitters during our Wisconsin period.. There were a lot of them," Stephen King remembers in his autobiographic book "On Writing".

"The only one I remember with any clarity is Eula, or maybe she was Beulah. She was a teenager, she was as big as a house, and she laughed a lot."

Eula-Beulah had a "wonderful sense of humor," King says. "Even at four I could recognize that, but it was a dangerous sense of humor—there seemed to be a potential thunderclap hidden inside each hand-patting, butt-rocking, head-tossing outburst of glee."

Very impressive to young King: "Hurricane Eula-Beulah’s dangerous winds"
Eula-Beulah would be on the phone, laughing with someone, and beckon him over. "She would hug me, tickle me, get me laughing, and then, still laughing, go upside my head hard enough to knock me down." Then she would tickle him with her bare feet until both were laughing again.

"Eula-Beulah was prone to farts—the kind that are both loud and smelly. Sometimes when she was so afflicted, she would throw me on the couch, drop her wool-skirted butt on my face, and let loose."

“Pow!” she’d cry in high glee. How did it feel? "It was like being buried in marshgas fireworks. I remember the dark, the sense that I was suffocating, and I remember laughing. Because, while what was happening was sort of horrible, it was also sort of funny."

The rest you know. That's why I wanted you to know this small Episode Form Stephen King's life. "In many ways, Eula-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism. After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors."

(Stephen King photo cc Pinguino. Fireworks by Nguyentuanhung. Thanks a lot, and maybe: Join us at Steemit!)