invasion of the body snatchers

I've learned a lot about myself this summer that I didn't really know before, or maybe just didn't realize. I've learned that

+ I like the color pink.
+ I have a favorite author. (Three, actually: E.M. Forster's dialog leaves me wanting an entire novel of nothing but, Jerry Spinelli creates prose and characters like God created butterflies (effortlessly, colorfully, and so real), and Louisa May Alcott taps into every emotion my little heart beats.)
+ I don't like bugs. (I've always considered myself a fairly reasonable female, not flighty or fidgety around crawly things, but one night I lay in bed looking at my bookshelves before turning off the light (I often do this), when a spot on the wall caught my eye. "Mommyyyyy," I called in a whiny voice to my mother, who was on the computer down the hall, "there's a spider on my ceiling." She replied, "Your father is going to have to get it." Dad had gone to bed already and his door was closed. I considered this a moment, then called whiningly, "Dadddyyyyy." He didn't stir, so my mom eventually came and got it. I thought my reluctance to get rid of the spider might disclose a hidden dislike for insects, but if that didn't, the invasion last night certainly did. My room was the Hurtgen Forest, with speedy black beetles crawling all over instead of Germans. They kept crawling over my blankets as I lay in bed reading, and I kept calling Mom into my room to dispose of them. Once I leaped out of bed as one raced towards my pillow, and as I stood in the doorway waiting for Mom, one flew - flew! - onto my bedspread. Needless to say, I slept in the guest room feeling like a Polish refugee escaping Hitler's troops. I dreamed I opened my eyes and there were beetles crawling all over the ceiling. I woke up standing in the middle of the room with my heart thumping. Today as I relayed the story to Dad (who should have been my Russian liberators, but instead was slumbering safely in his own room), he asked, "How many were there? Two?" "Uh, two??" I said. "Try six." "Oh," he said, ever wittily, "because there are four right there on the wall." Ha, ha, Dad. John, Paul, George, and Ringo aren't squashable, Beatle though they be.)
+ I love, love, love Chicago. (On State Street, that great street, I just wanna say: They do things that they don't do on Broadway.)
+ I like baseball. It seems to epitomize summer.
+ I miss Ohio.

I've discovered a few things and people this summer, too. My discoveries include

+ A young, swoon-inducing Frank Sinatra.
+ Malted milk powder.
+ Helen Forrest's big band era.
+ 1950s & 60s Jack Lemmon. (He sends me into fits of giggles and sighs.)
+ Jerry Spinelli's other books.
+ John Keats's pathetic fallacy! (The sun kissed away the morning's tears. You don't get much more pathetically fallicilic than that.)
+ A Humphrey Bogart movie I actually like. (I want to join the mob.)

Meanwhile

+ I still love Turner Classic Movies more than...almost anything.
+ I am recognized at the Plymouth Public Library.
+ It's football season again.
+ Summer's over, and to quote Siggy from What About Bob?, "Summer, fall, time to go...."