As I make my laborious yet lethargic way towards something like a Career this fall, I'm reminded of my true calling in life: Paranormal Studies. The smallish library at Sarah Jane Adams Elementary School had a surprisingly, perhaps even alarmingly, ample access to nonfiction books that had researched the weird, the terrifying, the unexplainable. After my fourth grade teacher told me I wasn't allowed to check out any more Roald Dahl books (I was reading Danny, Champion of the World for the third time) I memorized the numbers of the Dewey Decimal System that covered Cryptozoology and rarely had to visit the card catalog again. (Actually, Mrs. Siler made me check out a stupid book called Grandpa and Me first and I was so angry that I wasn't reading The BFG that I was actually partially pleased when Grandpa died at the end.)
Amid the dozens of reports on dolphins and wolves in 7th grade, when Mrs. Draper told us to write a report on any animal we'd like to research further, I whipped out a deeply engaging and well detailed five-page, double-spaced essay on the Loch Ness Monster. It was one of the only times during my awkward era that I felt proud to stand before a class of my peers in my Tweety Bird sweatshirt and knee-length, blue-and-white striped shorts. The kids actually had questions for me after I read my report and I think they were grateful not to have to listen to yet another long list of facts about horses and what they eat and shouldn't eat. Remember that this was still the decade that aired both the ending of Unsolved Mysteries and the beginning of The X-Files. We were the generation that grew up fantasizing about proton packs and 1.21 gigawatts. My 9th grade report on Bigfoot in 1997 was similarly received.
Even then I was cynical deep down, however. I knew Santa Claus wasn't real when I was eight, but it took me until 6th grade to admit it. I wanted Nessie to be real because I wanted to believe that people wouldn't just flat out lie. I wanted to believe in honesty and in the human spirit. If a Scottish minister said he was picnicking and saw a sea monster's long neck surface, rise, then gracefully and gently dip back below into the murky dark water, then he very well could have, damn it. Why make something like that up and take it to your grave? I could write a whole other post on taking things to the grave. I don't stand behind that as any kind of evidence anymore. Say something long enough for enough years and you can hypnotize yourself. Plus, most people go somewhat crazy just before the grave, anyway.
That's the real pull behind cryptozoology, I think. Part of it is adventure and the thrill of discovery, of course, but if anybody ever did finally snag a sasquatch, that would make hundreds of people honest, sane, and credible witnesses instead of crazies and liars. I remember being so angry when books would post pictures of the legendary creatures and then write about how they were hoaxes after all, and here are the men who staged them. I'm pretty sure, though, that had I been around at the time, I would have helped them out. The only thing that interested me more than the truth as a kid was being involved in secrets. Except I've never been good at taking things to next week, let alone to my grave.
