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as published by Benbella Books, April 2005, pg. 198-199

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May 12, 2001

This is a very sad day.

I woke up this morning and got ready to see the press screening ofShrekwith

my friend Abbie. I was completely unaware that something singular had happened in

the worldin myworldthe day before and a strange nostalgia fogged my head. For

the first time in nearly sixteen years, I put on a very special shirt: a baseball jersey with

cobalt blue sleeves. On the front of the white, see-through part of the jersey, it says,

"Don't Panic"; on the back it reads, "Re-elect Zaphod Beeblebrox for President." My

mother made that shirt for my fifteenth birthday. I wore it this morning because I

suddenly felt like it for no apparent reason.

I was (and still am) a huge Douglas Adams fan. I loved everything the man said

and wrote. He single-handedly shaped my sense of humor, made me an Anglophile,

and crowned me Queen of Geekdom at my junior high and high school. At band camp,

my friends and I even wore towels slung over our shoulders and asked others, "Do you

know where your towel is?" We would squint at the other band geeks, saying, But therearent any real people here at all! We were hopeless nerds. Yet, we were unique.

I couldn't wait to get a picture of Douglas Adams. I had the biggest, most

awful crush on him. Once I did get his picture, I was very disappointed. My

mother found me frowning over it in the TV Guide.

Whats wrong? she asked.

"He's old and tall and silly looking," I lamented.

My mother shrugged. "Well, honey, sometimes men are like that."

I discovered him in my early teens when I was listening to NPR. Thats

when I first heard the banjo strains that opened each episode of the Hitchhiker's

Guide to the Galaxyradio series. Suddenly, life in a joyless religious home was

not so bad. He was shockingly blasphemous, with all his tidbits about God; I tried

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somehow to reconcile my beliefs with how much I enjoyed him, but it never

worked. Still, I listened. And I laughed.

I recorded every episode onto tapes that are now brittle and dusty. To this

day, I keep them in a wobbly shoe box, even though I bought the official BBC

tapes long ago. My little sister once copied over part of Episode Four with

Michael Jackson songs. Just after I assured her that there was "a special place in

heaven for little sisters," my mother walked in. If it had only been a few minutes

later, I would have been an only child again.

But Douglas Adams did so much more than Hitchhiker's Guide. He wrote

five HG books altogether, two Dirk Gently novels (which inspired my novelette

Samantha Blazes: Psychic Detective of L.A.), The Meaning of Liffand more.

I once sent him a "belated birthday" lettersomewhere around three

months after his birthday. I wanted to make it a habit, but I forgot more often than

not. I told him in the letter about the Dont Panic shirt, and said that I hadnt

worn it in years because it was entirely see-through. (You could see my bra. It

embarrassed me to death as a teen.) I wanted to make him laugh because his

insane sense of humor taught a thirteen-year-old girl how to laugh when life

betrayed her. His humor and irreverence gave her a chance to enjoy life when

faith and family failed.This morning, we saw Shrekand I laughed a lotsomething I do quite a

bit these days. I went home afterwards to write. But this evening, Abbie called me

to tell me that Douglas Adams died yesterday of a heart attack. He was only

forty-nine. When we hung up, I cried. And I cried. I didn't know him as some of

you did. Maybe he was too old and tall and silly, but I loved him anyway in my

own special way. He is a part of me and always will be. And I think it was his

ghost whispering to me as I dressed this morning, saying, Well, now that Im

dead, lets have a look at you in that see-through shirt, shall we?

Goodnight, Marvin. At least now that pain in all the diodes down your left

side has stopped. But I will really, really miss you. . . .

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MARIA ALEXANDER has committed a number of literary crimes. You can

find a full rap sheet at http://www.mariaalexander.net. She dwells marginally in

Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats and a purse called Trog.

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