Letters to the Editor
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I never knew my mom was so hip.
"His one near-accident occurred because the other driver was deaf, and couldn't hear him honk."
Classic.
My early memories of this (magazine? newspaper?) is of that of myself as young boy on line with my mother at the checkout at the local Pathmark. She would pick it up, read a few lines, and throw it in the shopping cart. Just looking at the cover as she read was enough to hook me.
Later, mom would fall asleep on the couch, with that same copy of the WWN on the floor next to her as she fell asleep. I would pick it up, mesmerized by the nonsensical yet fascinating stories. Being a young child who had difficulty separating reality from fantasy as it was, this newspaper had me enthralled. Could these stories really be true? I mean, if we really had found Noah's Ark, why hadn’t I heard about this from Roger Grimsby's trusting monotone?
My favorite read was Ed Anger. As a child, I had always read to escape from my difficulties, so I was pretty worldly for my age. However, I could never understand how a kook like this could have his own column. He was always madder than this, or angrier than that, and yet he seemed to say the things that everyone always wanted to say, but never would in polite company. The WWN was not a rag in my eyes, but a revelation. Each week, as mom seemed to stretch a few of her hard earned dollars into a banquet of white packaged generic food into a banquet for my sister and I, she would always have enough change to spare for the latest copy of the WWN. Besides a few boxes labeled simply "macaroni and cheese", this was my favorite of her purchases.
Now I am 40 years old. I still devour words like a hungry lion. The difference is, I have a family of my own, and we thankfully don't have the monetary worries that I did when I was a child. My kids watch premium cable and play video games. They order their reading material from Amazon, not Pathmark. As for myself, I have a love of satire, and above all else, I love a sharp wit, or a finely written op-ed piece. As I read this article, I had a revelation: Mom was into satire as well. We were closer than I thought.
As I read The Onion, or McSweeneys.net, or Fox News for a laugh, Mom read the Weekly World News. We may not have had much as we were growing up, but Mom kept a sense of humor about things. Sure, the WWN was absurd, but it helped Mom keep it together through the hard times. It also not only fascinated me, but gave me a lifelong love of the abstract, and a sense of comfort. Things may get rough, and trouble may lie ahead. However, if Bat Boy can overcome all obstacles and end up on Broadway, well, shit, we'll be OK.
Thanks for everything, Weekly World News. You were obscure, absurd, and ridiculous. You also gave one naive reader a sense of curiosity, and more importantly, a sense of humor.