That’s when I got my first lesson about looking in the rearview mirror!
Jeff and I would spend hours driving around aimlessly. We didn’t go anywhere, and we didn’t do anything. We just loved driving back and forth through town with the radio cranked up, seeing who else was driving around. We would honk the horn and shout to everyone we knew.
Today, Jeff and I don’t have much time to drive around honking the horn at people. But we are still friends. When his two kids, Molly and Michael, were younger, they both read Goosebumps. I think they’re smart and funny …
Those were some of my best friends. Next, I suppose I should tell you about my first girlfriend …
Bexley was a very wealthy community. The Ohio governor’s mansion stood two blocks from my house, along with several other enormous mansions.
We lived in a tiny little brick house at the edge of town, three doors down from the railroad tracks. I felt self-conscious because my family didn’t have as much money as my friends’ families.
My dad worked very hard. He never stopped working! He and my mom wanted to keep us in this nice community. And they made sure we never felt poor or deprived.
But my brother and I still found it hard to fit in to such a rich town. We couldn’t afford to drive around in big cars and wear the latest, coolest clothes.
Sometimes I felt like a real outsider. For example, in high school, I was crazy about a girl named Lynne. I guess you could say she was my first girlfriend. I liked her so much, my cheeks would turn bright red every time I talked to her in school. I could feel them burning! It really embarrassed me, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Lynne’s parents were quite wealthy. They lived in a ranch-style house that seemed to stretch for blocks! On Lynne’s sixteenth birthday, they gave her a pink Thunderbird. A Thunderbird was the coolest car you could have when I was in high school.
Imagine how nerdy I felt driving up Lynne’s long driveway to pick her up on a Saturday night in my dad’s beat-up little Ford.
It probably didn’t bother Lynne a bit. But it made me even more shy and uncomfortable. My cheeks start to burn just thinking about it!
I think that my feeling like an outsider as a kid helped to make me a writer. I always seemed to be standing away from the crowd, watching everyone. I became an observer, which is part of what a writer does.
Another thing a writer does is try writing a novel. So I did. It wasn’t all my doing. In some ways, I have my brother, Bill, to thank for getting me started. By this time, my brother was too old to fall for the Grashus Ranger game.
Instead of rebelling against our parents, Bill started rebelling against me. It was very upsetting. One October, he actually refused to rake the yard. It looked for a while as if I might have to do it.
That’s when I started my first serious novel.
Well, it wasn’t serious. I wanted it to be a funny adult animal story. I called it Lovable Bear.
Mom was very supportive of my writing. She wanted what I wanted, and I wanted to be a writer. What I didn’t want was to work in the yard. That’s why, when it came time to paint the garage or shovel snow, someone else had to do it. Someone like Bill.
“I can’t rake leaves! I’m working on my novel!” I would cry.
I wrote constantly. I really was obsessed.
I also read a lot when I was in school. I especially liked science fiction. I discovered sci-fi in elementary school. I loved traveling to the future and to other worlds in books by such authors as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Sheckley.
Robert Sheckley wrote a book called Mindswap. It was about a company that gave you a vacation from your own body. They switched your mind into the body of an alien on another planet. And they switched the alien into your body. It was a good way to visit another planet. After two weeks, the company switched you back to your own body.
I remembered this story when I started writing Goosebumps. I decided to write something with the same idea. So I wrote a story about a boy who is unhappy with his life. He goes to a company that will switch his mind into another body. But something goes wrong—a bee flies into the machine. And the boy’s brain gets sent into the bee’s body! He’s trapped inside a bee! The book was called Why I’m Afraid of Bees—and the idea started from that book I read when I was ten or twelve.
I couldn’t get enough science fiction. That’s what brought me back week after week to watch The Twilight Zone on TV. Rod Serling’s weird, supernatural, half-hour TV show hooked me from the start.
Serling introduced each story. He said we were about to be caught in “the middle ground between light and shadow—between science and superstition.” And his voice was so spooky. I liked the whole look and sound of that show. I still watch the reruns today, and I’ve caught myself recalling certain eerie parts when I outline a new Fear Street or Goosebumps book.
Most sci-fi stories had a wild twist at the end—something the reader didn’t expect at all. That was one of my favorite parts of these stories—trying to guess the surprise ending.
I liked surprise endings so much when I was a kid, I remembered them when I started writing scary books. I decided I wanted to have a surprise at the end of every book. Then I decided it would be even more fun to have a surprise at the end of every chapter.
One of my big opportunities to use my writing talent came at the end of my senior year in high school. I wrote what I thought was the world’s all-time funniest senior-class skit. I called it “TV Programs That Have Distracted Us and Kept Us from Studying While We Were in High School.”
The Narrator introduced the Announcer, who introduced the “emcee for tonight, a man who is as honest as the day is long—Benedict Arnold!”
Part of the skit was a spoof of an amateur talent show:
NARRATOR: “Another very popular type of television program was the talent-scout program. Talent scouts would bring young talent to the show so that they could perform for the massive audience of TV viewers.
“Sometimes these young talents were very lucky after they appeared on this type of show. Some of them were lucky enough to be able to go back home and get a normal job where they belonged.”
The senior skit really had them laughing. I had them laughing! Cheering! It was a hit!
Time and again I relived the audience’s laughter—laughter at my words—all the way to Rubino’s, our favorite pizza restaurant! That’s where we usually went with our friends on weekends, or took our dates. First we’d go to a game at school, then out afterward for pizza. Sometimes it was a movie and pizza, or a concert and pizza. That night it was the senior skit and pizza.
Looking back, the one constant in high school was pizza. I’ve been all over the world. But Columbus, Ohio, still has the best pizza.
High school graduation was only days away. Life was good.
My mood changed the minute I walked in the house. There was an envelope addressed to me from Ohio State University. Was this a letter telling me I had been accepted at the university? Or had I been rejected? Would the university keep me out because I never took Latin? Because I couldn’t jump into a swimming pool? Because I typed with one finger? Because I spent all my time writing little magazines instead of studying?
I nearly tore the envelope in two getting to the letter. I shook open the single page and scanned the words.
I was in! The university accepted me!
Ohio State University was only a bus ride away. I could live at home, which was cheap, and keep on eating my mom’s cooking, which was delicious.
College life, I learned quickly, is very different from high school. High school traps you in the building all day. You drag yourself from class to class, from morning till late afternoon.
In college, you go to your classes, and the rest of the day is your own. You can do whatever you want. Some students spend it working part time. Or studying.
I spent all of my spare time at the Sundial magazine office.
Sundial was the main reason I went
to Ohio State. Even in high school, I’d dreamed about writing for that magazine.
James Thurber, writer and cartoonist for the New Yorker, was once a Sundial writer. Thurber became one of America’s great humorists, and I was thrilled to follow in his footsteps.
When he was in college in the 1930s, Milton Caniff contributed his artwork to Sundial. Caniff is remembered as the creator of the comic strip Steve Canyon, an exciting adventure comic that was presented in many newspapers.
For me, joining the Sundial staff was a dream come true.
At the end of my freshman year, I applied to the Publications Board to be Sundial editor. The board made all of the big decisions about Sundial. Professors held most of the seats on the board. They were very cautious people. The chairman asked me a lot of questions.
I showed the board samples of my work. I think they wanted to judge how much of a troublemaker I might be. I tried to look harmless.
It worked. I got the job.
Sundial’s sales had not been growing for several years. My goal was to put together a monthly magazine that would give college students a whole lot of laughs. And the price for all this humor? A mere twenty-five cents!
To do this, we made fun of just about everything on campus. The deans of men and women were favorite targets. It was the deans’ job in those days to punish college students who broke the university’s rules.
They sure had a lot of rules. Among them was a curfew for coeds. That’s what college girls were called back in those days. This meant that on “school nights” the girls had to be in their dorm rooms by 10:30 p.m. On Saturdays it was 1:00 a.m. Sometimes, for example, during homecoming weekend, they could stay out until 2:00 a.m.! There were no rules for the guys. The guys could stay out all night if they wanted to. Sound unfair? It was.
Sundial made major jokes about this. We pictured the dean of women as being totally old-fashioned. Which wasn’t much of a reach, since she was.
We were trying to be funny. But I like to think we did our small part in the early 1960s to bring about change. Soon after, the unfair rules were dropped.
I was editor for three years. I made up the name “Jovial Bob” for myself, because I wanted “Jovial Bob” to be a running character in the magazine. In fact, I liked to think of myself as a running joke.
We printed cartoons, fake interviews, and phony ads in every issue. A lot of our readers were guys. For that reason, Sundial featured pictures of a Girl of the Month. First, we picked a good-looking student. Then a professional photographer took the pictures. We posed the girl against campus backgrounds such as the famous horseshoe-shaped football stadium.
One month, we decided to play a joke. Instead of running a picture of an actual student, we used a publicity photo of a Hollywood starlet. We made up a name for her—Pamela Winters. (Pamela was my sister’s name.) Pamela Winters was drop-dead beautiful.
The interview included this irresistible offer: “If you want to see even more of her—her telephone number is …” And we printed the number. But it wasn’t really Pamela’s number. It was the phone number of the student senate office. OSU’s student senate was the college version of a high school student council.
We had record-breaking sales that day. Eight thousand copies! And all because of the photos of “Pamela Winters.” The student senate’s phone started ringing. It rang and rang nonstop, day and night.
After a few days of endless calls, the student senators tried to strike back. One of the senators pretended to be Miss Winters. She told the guys who called to “stop by sometime.” Then she gave them my home address! Next, the senators redirected all of the calls to my home phone number!
My parents were not amused. My sister, Pamela, loved it!
Years later, I used the same idea in a Goosebumps book called Calling All Creeps! The same kind of practical joke backfires—and a boy receives the strangest calls imaginable! I loved practical jokes in those days.
Which is why I ran for student senate president during my senior year in college. The rules said a student had to be a junior to run.
I told the student newspaper: “During the past year, the students of Ohio State have come to expect absolutely nothing from the senate. Since I’m graduating this spring and won’t be around next year, I feel I’m in a better position than the other candidates to give the students absolutely nothing.”
The slogan on my posters was ELECT A CLOWN FOR PRESIDENT—JOVIAL BOB. We dressed up a couple of Sundial staffers in clown costumes and sent them to the campus. Their assignment? Remind students that all of the candidates were clowns—but only Jovial Bob was clown enough to admit it.
Our media campaign consisted of newspaper ads. Ads like this:
As a Public Service
Jovial Bob
Will Not Speak Tonight
in the Delta Gamma (Sorority) House
Enjoy Yourselves!
In spite of an inspired campaign, I didn’t win. Out of the record 8,727 votes cast, I got 1,163.
Pretty good—especially since I wasn’t on the ballot!
The university refused to put my name on the ballot simply because I wasn’t eligible.
What kind of democracy is that?
So how did I get as many votes as I did? Write-ins. My supporters wrote “Jovial Bob” on their ballots.
Which, I think, explains why we lost. Many of my would-be voters didn’t have pencils. And some of them couldn’t write.
There were times when the Lantern, the student newspaper, suggested that I was one of those who couldn’t write. The paper made a habit of reviewing the latest issue of Sundial. Some of these reviews were downright nasty.
Luckily, other students wrote letters to the newspaper to support me. For example, this nice letter:
Dear (Lantern) Editor:
I want to take this opportunity to defend Sundial and Jovial Bob Stine from the … attack in last Wednesday’s letter column.
The Sundial is a constantly improving enterprise, and Jovial Bob is a man of infinite wit and talent …
I would have made these same statements even if my brother hadn’t forced me.
H. William Stine
I’ve kept in touch with people I knew in high school, and I have friends from my Sundial days. One of them is Joe Arthur. Joe and I are such good friends that I asked him to work on this book with me.
Joe is the funniest guy I know. His specialty is sending the most horrible, tasteless Christmas presents a person can send. Every year, I dread opening Joe’s presents because I know they’re going to be ridiculous.
When my son, Matt, was born, Joe mailed us a shot put as a baby present! It was so heavy! It cost nearly a hundred dollars to mail—and the poor mailman could barely lift the thing. I’ll say one thing, though—it was the only shot put Matt received!
But here’s the worst present Joe ever sent Matt. One Christmas, when Matt was eight or nine, Joe sent him one walkie-talkie!
Matt was furious. Can you imagine anything more useless than one walkie-talkie? I’m sure Joe will think of something …
When Joe and I were in school, we would call each other after dinner just about every night. We would start laughing about something or other, and laugh till we got off the phone. I have no idea what we were laughing about.
I graduated from Ohio State in June 1965.
Suddenly, I faced what they call The Real World.
What I wanted to do was go to New York. That’s what I’d dreamed of doing. My bags were already packed. Bill had seen to that. He couldn’t wait to get rid of me!
But it takes money. I had a little in the bank. I saved it during college from part of the Sundial profits. I just didn’t have enough.
Before I could make my New York dream come true, I needed some money. Some cash.
So I decided to rob a bank.
Only kidding.
Forget about robbing banks. I found a much scarier job. I became a substitute teacher.
I’ve written a lot of horrifyin
g scenes. But I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than facing a new class of students each and every morning.
Everyone knows how kids act up when they have a substitute teacher. It’s open season. There’s always a kid who claims his name is Pete Moss or Ben Dover or Harry Legg. Some girl who says she’s Candy Barr. There are kids who sit in the wrong seat. Kids who don’t even come to class.
Scarier than the scariest walk down Fear Street!
After a few months, I was given my own classes. History classes. The toughest part of teaching, I decided, was getting the kids interested in history. Most of them didn’t like it. And being an English major, I can’t honestly say I cared much for it myself. But there I was. I was a history teacher. I did the best I could.
One of my tricks was this: I told the kids that if they behaved themselves Monday through Thursday without too much complaining, Friday would be Free Reading Day. That meant they could bring in anything they wanted to read. Including comic books.
I emphasized the comic books because I loved comic books, and I thought maybe some of my students did, too. Besides, they might have a few titles I hadn’t read.
So we did comics for several weeks. Free Reading Day was fun. I sat with the kids. I read their comics. We passed them around, read aloud. Mine was the only class in the entire building doing such a crazy thing.
It was on one of our Free Reading Days that the principal came in to observe me. The principal was one of those stern, super-strict principals, the kind of principal everyone fears.
I was checking out the latest Spider-Man when the principal came in.
GULP!
Most of the kids were reading. But not all of them. Several were goofing off in the back of the room. Actually, on Free Reading Days, I had the feeling we were all goofing off.
That’s because basically we were.
I was on edge, waiting for this no-nonsense principal to say something. He looked at the class, he looked at me. He scowled.