Episode 79 | Book Report — The Face on the Milk Carton

listen call them what you want knee knockers golden nuggets thigh slappers Etc but our friends at manscape refer to them as the boys now not every man has children including me unless you count my cats and well I always do but every man is responsible for their two boys below the waist when your little guys have more hair than they need like my cats trust manscaped for all your grooming dreams boys need love too that's what I always say so join the 10 million men worldwide who Trust manap by going to manscape.com and use code pretty dark for 20% off plus free shipping you heard it here first folks the boys are back in town I got my first manscape back in 2020 and let me tell you it got me through those hard times just me my lawnmower 3.0 my cats a bottle of whiskey you get the idea a lot of nude gardening but none of that would have been possible without the confidence that comes with manscaped and I haven't been the same since the lawn mower family now includes the lawn mower 3.0 plus the 4.0 Pro and the 5.0 Ultra which helps reduce Nicks ingrown hairs and other grooming accidents yesh yep three ball trimmers you better believe it that's three trimmers not three balls what do you think this is some kind of Sideshow act get out of here boys need love too and for this reason each trimmer is equipped with skin safe technology and LED spotlight so you can shave in the dark and unique features for different grooming needs but I got to say it skin safe technology does not guarantee cut protection don't be an idiot but you can shave in the shower or Take It Outside to shave during a Summer Afternoon thunderstorm because these babies are waterproof summer vac coming up manscape has got you covered these trimmers come with a travel case and even a travel lock feature to avoid any accidental powering and all those weird looks in the airport have you ever even seen Fight Club nine times out of 10 it's an electric razor but every once in a while it's a manscaped lawnmower always imply ownership in the event of a ball trimmer get 20% off plus free shipping with the code pretty dark at manscaped.com that's 20% off plus free shipping with the code pretty dark at manscaped.com for the best your boys have ever looked Trust manscaped [Applause] [Music] you're listening to that's pretty dark the podcast where we talk about all of the entertainment that scared us as children and still haunts us as adults so grab your flashlight and join us as we take a frightfully nostalgic look over our shoulders and under our beds and in our closets and together we'll realize wo that's pretty dark pretty dark [Music] good for us doing the 79 times oh my God lord Mercy almost 80 times we've we've been here in these chairs 80 times around microphone Buzz believes it he's in my lab right now and he believes it he knows that I have spent all this time away from him but now I let them in here while I record you remember back in the day I would keep the door shut like you do and they would just scream yeah I remember how distracting it was terrible they used to scream a lot now they don't scream they just attack me for cuddles which is very sweet but also distracting and Pace in front of the computer camera yeah that too distract you my name is kayin my name is Christian and you guys are listening to that's pretty dark and if any of you YouTube listeners out there noticed um holes part two never popped up on on YouTube Because by the way guys apologies that is a issue infringement we probably could fix it it would just take editing Christian some um some effort so no I don't think so because um what the copyright content that was flagged is the Spanish version of holes the film the film holes the Spanish dub yeah there are a lot of sound bites listen of course hopefully this will show up on YouTube and you guys will be like oh wait a second we've missed an episode yes you have if you don't use another streaming service you can find it on our website that'spretty dark.com the full episode will stream there so no worries we don't want to leave you out it's just YouTube did not play nice with that that episode I feel like it's a write a passage I am surprised we haven't been flagged before knock on wood took us nearly three years we're coming up on our third anniversary I know my journalistic rights fair use fair use law commentary yeah just a heads up apologies to our our YouTube listeners and our Google go to our website that's pretty dark.com it is August and summer's coming to an end and the back to school Vibes are strong I always get hit really hard at the beginning of August with that like summer Nostalgia right back to school just everything hits me super hard and part of it because I have an August birthday so it's like right it's that coming around again the Cycles ending and beginning and it's all at the same time and it's very heavy to me August is not always easy around here no I get but but what's good about it is that spooky season is just around the corner it starts earlier and earlier every year earlier and earlier every year great but before we give ourselves over to the candy and the cobwebs we've got a very special book report we've been talking about doing from the very beginning this has been a long time coming and it's been a minute since you've done a book report it's true and although the events of the novel take place between mid October and mid December in Connecticut by the way so Gilmore Girls territory star H giving it that chilly Autumn atmosphere we all need so desperately I've always wanted to cover this book in the spirit of back to school this is the land of book bags and being late for class where homework is the enemy and Friday nights are King when half days and holidays are markers in time that give everything in between that much more meaning I'm sure it's like tenfold when your birthday is in August and that's the marker of the new school year M often I would start school on my birth birday that sucks several many times blows several times in college too yep it was usually the F it was like in college it'd be syllabus day and I'd be like yeah happy birthday to me I guess I need to forget that you said that that's like the one year I went to Birmingham to work on a movie and like I think our first day on set was Halloween mhm and I was so pissed cuz I was like you couldn't wait one more day I mean you couldn't give this to me that was very upset I know you you felt like they personally took it from you which is but I did wear my orange pants and my Jack Skellington zip up Hoodie so I did I did okay I did the upside is seeing people you know interacting on Halloween anyway this is some real 80s and 90s Nostalgia stuff here uh I've been listening to so much music from this era 90s music The Cure yeah oh the Cure I was just listening to The Cure slow dive The Cranberries I've been listening to The Cranberries all summer I don't know what it is Smashing Pumpkins it's been it's been a really good week so feeling '90s Vibes every once in a while a story comes along that represents a time and a place so perfectly it practically infects the culture from which it originated spilling profoundly Dreadful truths as thought viruses that spread by way of Whispers and nervous laughter these terrible Revelations take root in the mind of the reader where they are watered by rumination and fed by anxiety allowing fear to germinate and horror to grow and Bloom one such story is the novel The Face on the Milk Carton a suspenseful young adult mystery written by Caroline B Cooney published in 1990 and if you're like me you didn't read this book as a kid but you heard plenty of people talk about it and by the time I was in school it had long since left its mark on kids born in the80s and it already evolved into something much more resembling folklore than a book for teenagers yeah that was actually what I was going to say about it like this book absolutely missed me it was not the time frame that I was I was inside of but I definitely feel the lore around not just this novel but the whole campaign yes it was the campaign was still active when we were kids it was but it's really that late 70s early 80s what else are we going to do but try to put these kids faces in front of as many people as possible Right missing children this book belongs on our show for many many reasons not just because it has all the page turning suspense of the Skeleton Man the Eerie mystery of a Watcher in the woods and the cultural relevance of holes it also has the gut-wrenching ver similitude of Go Ask Alice have you ever read that book I have I think we could cover that one day I think it belongs I haven't really thought about it in those terms but yeah we probably could the face in the milk carton hearkens back to the swirling mass of topics we covered in our very first two episodes the dark origins of children's program and it relies on the one facet of 80s and 90s culture that is never failed to send a chill down my spine this is the campaign you were just talking about M The Haunting trend of putting photos of missing children on milk cartons in the hopes they'll be recognized by someone having their Morning cereal or washing down a peanut butter sandwich in the school cafeteria and as if it wasn't already a thrilling enough prospect that you might one day actually recognize one of the missing Milk Carton Kids Cooney forces the reader to confront an even more terrifying possibility yeah if the missing kid you recognize is yourself is yourself such a kick-ass concept I mean like I'm so jealous that I wasn't there to think of it myself I feel like I thought about this a lot because I I don't know if I've Just Seen documentaries where there have been kids that were abducted and they do find out later in life or maybe even into adulthood that they're not who they think they areh that I can't imagine how it would rock somebody's world to it's like a lifetime original movie you know it's not just everything around you it's your own identity that's been taken from you right right or modified and there's a really really good chance that Cooney was inspired by a real life event and don't worry guys we're going to get to it tonight let's take a closer look at the face in the milk carton to see if we might recognize it after all these years how much does it resemble the childhood fears we once knew does it merely reflect the culture of stranger danger back on itself or does it fully embody the Visage of frightful Nostalgia that we've come to know so well in many ways it's like the Dorian Gray's portrait of children's books aging faster than the Timeless Horrors it's meant to expose but to get us started let's introduce the author Caroline Boney got to Cooney was born in 1947 in New York but grew up in Connecticut where she lived most of her life until she moved to South Carolina to be near family where she still lives today so from Cooney's website Caroline bonei is the author of more than 90 suspense mystery and romance novels for teenagers which have sold over 15 million copies and are published in several languages The Face on the Milk Carton has sold over 3 million copies and was made into a television movie her books have won many State Library Awards and are on many book lists such as the New York Public Libraries annual teen picks and as far as I can tell these website entries are at least a decade old so I'm sure the numbers are much higher today um she also has a separate biographical page where she writes more about her childhood and growing up to be a writer so if anybody is interested in that U like a more intimate look into her life definitely go check that out and she wants to hear from readers so send her a nice message let her know how much you uh if some of our darklings remember this book and want to yeah say hello and as a forward to my 2012 reprint of this book Cooney writes dear reader I'm often asked where the idea came from for The Face on the Milk Carton over 20 years ago I was in Loria airport The Concourse was plastered with copies of a homemade missing child poster the little girl in the black and white photograph had been missing for 15 years all I could think of were her parents that mother and father had made a stack of posters and come to New York hoping that after a decade and a half one of the tens of thousands of people at this airport would recognize the picture and tell them where their little girl was now but nobody can recognize an 18-year-old girl from a picture of her at age three I boarded my plane weeping for those parents and then I had a thought there's one person who might recognize that photo the little girl herself what an idea for a suspense thriller a teenage girl recognizes herself on a missing child poster this is a book about profound worry and agonizing decisions profound worry and agonizing decisions Story of My Life middle name my government name profound worry and my middle name agonizing decisions woof I feel like I would have had similar thoughts if I pass by that poster just the just that desperation the like the that you can feel yeah I think about it a lot like any of the documentaries that we watch today just with missing people in general I think about it all the time just like the agony of not knowing where a loved one is after that long basically having no closure about whether they're still with us even not knowing is always the worst part people say it's just horrific so this story follows the life and Troubles of Janie Johnson but who is Janie true to the media from this time it comes as no real surprise that Janie is extremely normal she's just your average 15-year-old girl going about her life a kid like you and me as normal as a teenage girl can be sure you know she doesn't make the best grades in school but they're good enough for the Honor Society she has a solid group of friends who eat lunch together every day she's an only child with very present parents she's learning how to drive and she's technically in love with the boy next door reev but the quirks that make Janie unique are actually all either bits of foreshadowing or have very ironic payoffs at some point in the story which I applaud Cooney for these include her crazy red hair and her lactose intolerance you can relate yeah very relatable are we talking like Pippy long stocking hair or like a lot of it what's the vibe messy okay they call it serious hair like serious hair serious she got serious hair she also feels smaller and less physically mature than the other girls uh you can also a story about me right her parents are older than other parents and she is currently obsessed with names name spelling and identity her actual name is Jane but she hates the name Jane Johnson because it's too bland so she goes by Janie for fun and she has a habit of writing her name different ways and when she absent-mindedly puts the wrong name on a test her teacher makes a comment about her having an ident an crisis so like I said foreshadowing foreshadowing and I get it too I mean I never really liked my name either so I think I feel like I used to Doodle my name different ways to make it seem more interesting but never on a test though you can get points taken off your test for writing your name yeah you get like two points for getting her name right what's in a name that would you call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet Rose Bud uh in Jan's opinion her friends all have better names than her her best friends are Sarah Charlotte Sherwood and Adair Odell and there's also Peter Jason and Katrina so Jason and Katrina you have two for I yeah I know a lot of these people I think on the friends list yeah and these kids are all fun and silly but they're relatively nisit and mostly exist as plot points and scene fillers but it's in the lunchroom with this group of friends in mid October when Janie first sees something she can never unsee a picture of her three-year-old missing child self on the side of a milk carton like I said she's recently lactose intolerant so while everyone else gets an 8 ounce carton of milk Janie is pissed because she's eating a peanut butter sandwich at lunch and the only thing she has to wash it down with is cranberry juice those are not complimentary flavors no I'm sorry but as someone who drinks a lot of cranberry juice that's no Sarah Charlotte says okay who's been kidnapped this time everybody turned the milk cartons over to see who had been kidnapped the local Dairy put pictures of stolen children on the back of the carton and every few weeks there was a new child air says I don't know how you're supposed to recognize somebody who was 3 years old when she got taken from a shopping center in New Jersey that was nearly a dozen years ago it's ridiculous and then Pete says my mother says none of them are really kidnapped anyhow she says it's all hype all it is is a divorce where one parent gets mad and takes his own kid but he doesn't tell the other parent where they're going it's never actually a stranger stealing a kid like on television to which Sarah Charlotte says you mean they weren't really stolen nobody wants a ransom nobody's being tortured so you know getting pretty serious getting pretty heavy there at the old lunch table I'm not sure what statistical knowledge Cooney had in the late 1980s or what was available then but Pete's mother's explanation is fairly accurate if not absolute and flawed to quote an article from the national Center for missing and exploited children published just a month ago here at ncmec we know that stranger abduction are the rarest type of missing child case in fact fewer than 1% of cases reported to the ncmec are classified as non-family abductions wow so 1% that's not even like that's just non-family these could still be people who know the children it doesn't necessarily mean strangers oh my God so it's a very very small percentage regardless I was going to say in modern times it's you know almost always family pretty much almost always right I guess it always was maybe that's the thing that made serial killers so scary is that they were typically just sort of it it felt like random selection because they would have their MMO they would have their type yeah it was more about the type of the person than if they knew the person themselves right that sort of fed the whole hissteria surrounding like oh no strangers are going to come take your children stranger danger the stranger the danger the stranger the stranger I don't know the stranger the stranger the stranger the stranger the more stranger danger that works for me Janie overcome with hate for her cranberry juice at this point decides to drink Sarah Charlotte's as of yet untouched carton of milk don't do it Janie all of us lactose intolerant people know that no matter how bad we want it it's not worth it she just needs the wait a couple decades for all the almond milk and the oat milk options there probably weren't a whole lot of Alternatives back then there certainly weren't in my childhood I'm really lucky I didn't become lactose intolerant until my like mid to late 20s right and they say it doesn't get better doesn't Janie set the carton down inside the little girl on the back of the milk carton stared back at her it wasn't much of a picture after all how good could a picture be when it was printed on a milk carton the girl was an ordinary little girl hair and tight pigtails one against each thin cheek a dress with a narrow White Collar the dress was white with tiny dark polka dots something evil and thick settled on Janie blocking her throat dimming her eyes she remembered that dress how the collar itched remembered the fabric it was summer fabric the wind blew through it remembered how those braids swung like red silk against her cheeks Janie held Sarah Charlotte's empty Milk Carton and stared at the photograph of the little girl and thought I was kidnapped I have some Goosebumps happening and if it's true then her real name is Jenny spring and she's a year younger than she thought she was oh so this is where I have to give a Content warning everybody probably should have done it earlier probably should have uh as you guys know warning yeah we're discussing missing children yeah that's what this whole story is about and I'm about to get into some of the more higher profile cases that led up to the milk carton campaign and I do get into some of the details not you know to a gross extent but but mhm it's there just so you know sometimes we cross into True Crime territory but we definitely want to give a a Content trigger warning for all of our darkling friends just in case you're not into that sort of thing absolutely not that any of us are into that sort of thing but you know I would say like I'm into missing children necessarily but like you know I find the concept generally enticing so if we remember from our dark origin series the 80s were an especially dark time in American history thanks to the borderline aperture pic incantation warnings to Children known as stranger danger media Outlets began latching onto a number of high-profile child abduction in missing children's cases and as we learned in our intro to Courage the Carly dog Ted Turner gave the world its first 24-hour News Network in 1980 by way of CNN meaning people could now follow investigation developments in real time without delay steadily raising the temperature of the Waters of mass hysteria to the point of boiling over I'm doing my best not to repeat a lot of the things I said before if you have listened to those episodes even recently this is still going to hopefully be fresh but I'm also not covering everything here that we talked about in those episodes so if you want the whole full picture definitely listen to both things even if it's been a minute maybe a refresher is in order for some of our more dedicated long-term darklings The Haunting concept of stranger danger was born out of the missing children movement or more appropriately the missing children Panic of the 70s and 80s which that specific Wikipedia page describes as a moral Panic concerning child abduction and Murder by strangers in the United States MH it began with those high-profile cases that I'm about to describe but the Panic wouldn't have been much without the quoting subsequent media reports exaggerating and misrepresenting child abduction statistics the Panic popularized the misleading claim that 1.5 million children per year disappeared or were abducted in the United States introducing the stranger danger narrative into public discourse and intensified tropes relating to the sexual predation and murder of boys by homosexuals in American culture especially after the publicization of gay serial killers Otis tulle John Wayne gasy and Randy craft I wondered how long it would take before you'd say gayy really unfortunate um but luckily since Janie is a female I won't have to get into those guys in those crimes but I do want to point out that majority of quote unquote stereotypical kidnappings actually involved girls not boys for sure it's just that the public founds boy abductions to be that much more Sensational and horrifying MH like they could understand taking a little girl matter but not a little boy right right boys matter to Society at large girls might just disappear sometimes you it happens it happens is anybody else out there thinking in this moment as I am right now of that one song off of Ali and AJ's first album called I am one of them about missing children to raise awareness for missing children who remembers this raise your hand who in the front you um that just popped into my brain and that came out in let's check I think 2004 let's check I'm going to I don't know if I know this so okay yeah this came out in 2005 which is beyond the terms that we're right now talking about but it was Track n on alien AJ's first album Into the rush I get in the car another tragic disaster I'm safe where I am yet another is captured the traffic is stopped people just stare another alert does the kid have a prayer life is not fair wow it's hard to look outside my door with all the news reports and more yet I'll do my part and stay on alert for all the kids out there who are getting hurt it could have happened to me can you make me believe this could have a happy end cuz I am one of them well you know good for them for bringing awareness yeah the second verse is actually darker but dang I remember this vividly they did kind of like a whole campaign around missing children never hurts yeah true just like the mil cart I mean everything any effort you know to bring awareness to or to you know call recognition to a missing kid it's like a bake sale you know it probably won't make that much money but it's more money than you would have had otherwise it's not a terrible analogy as terrible as the analogy is is that insensitive of me to compare missing children to a bake sale just well you're not comparing the missing children to the I'm comparing them to cookies and brownies and cakes no no that's not what you're doing I hope but so kind of like Ali and AJ you know we're just like them um we we also have a platform that we can use sure uh so I think we should take a moment to scream it from our own little rooftop um that homosexuality and pedophilia are not the same category oh not even close this is not a debate this should never have been a debate this was homophobia at its roote and using a very real very terrible tragic problem and societal stain yeah to you know perpetuate homophobia and that's not okay mhm lots of ignorance floating around mainstream media just sort of uh yeah taking things and running with it without understanding it or pandering to Their audience who were homophobic that's true man and you guys didn't think it was going to get very dark tonight they know it's always going to be pretty dark the earliest high-profile case was the memorable disappearance of Aon Pats who went missing on the morning of May 25th 1979 in the Soho neighborhood of lower Manhattan he was 6 years old and it was his first time walking to the school bus stop by himself it was only two blocks he should have been safe but he never made it his father was a professional photographer so he had tons of photos of Von which were printed on missing child posters and even projected on screens in Time Square which Drew enough media attention to give the investigation a national audience to the point that Ronald Reagan later declared May 25th to be National missing children's day which as so happens is now International missing children's day we talked about it early on on the show like years ago um the cropsy documentary yeah about kind of the cropsy boogeyman who was like stealing children in Staten Island and I think it was kind of inspired by I think the case of Aton and and others it's a haunting documentary about several of these cases in the 70s and 80s um yeah in and around New York I watched that in preparation for our uh history of Halloween series like two years ago that's right it's it's a wild time they they try to put a face on the boogeyman that's that's stealing children right because it became like you were saying somewhat of an urban legend over time yeah did you watch that new show Eric no with old Benedict cumber bash mm they Loosely based that off of the eighton Pats case but it's a very like Fantastical version and they changed so many of the details but it's that same concept of like a 12-year-old boy it's his first time walking to school through New York and he doesn't make it kind of like how stranger things used Jacob I mean these like you were saying earlier these are the stories that that capture our attention and because you think just like alen AJ you think like it could have been me it could have been my kid it could have you know you you always put yourself in those shoes because the oneoff time that it does happen you know yeah you can't help but be horrified and haunted by it the next highest profile case was Adam Walsh who was also 6 years old when he went missing from M seer's department store in Hollywood mall and Hollywood Florida on July 27th 1981 uh this is the strongest content warning I can give sorry I have to say this 2 weeks later his severed head was found in a drainage ditch alongside of Florida Turnpike yeah that was intense Adam's father is John Walsh of America's Most Wanted a TV movie called Adam was made in premiered on October 10th 1983 with 38 million viewers its first airing W it was broadcast three times and concluded each showing with a series of missing children advertisements 55 in total of which 13 were recognized and found wow in 1984 Congress passed the missing children's assistance act which not only established the national system for recording missing persons but it also allowed for the creation of the national Center for missing and exploited children which was organized by a few people including John Walsh and Norine gsh who son Johnny went missing in 1982 Johnny goshh and Eugene Martin were both paper boys for the De Moine register who both went missing from their paper Roots two years apart for the same newspaper Johnny went missing on September 5th 1982 when he was 12 and Eugene on August 12th 1984 when he was 133 because of this a local De Moine Dairy company called Anderson Ericson Dairy began printing photos of Johnny and Eugene on their milk cartons although sadly without success and not long after a Chicago Dairy did the same thing a nonprofit called the national Child Safety Council launched the missing children milk carton program and in less than 3 months 700 independent daries across the US were routinely printing photos of local missing children on their milk cartons with an estimated 3 to 5 billion cartons produced wow got milk I love that it was kind of Grassroots in that way Grassroots like grass-fed Dairy yeah sure H I love that this was like a campaign that kind of caught traction just based on a couple small places business owners trying to do something good for the communities that they were in like there's this space that's free you know they they could have sold that space to advertisers they could have you know maximized profits on but that's not how they were thinking they were thinking what's going to make an impact in a positive way true and I agree it's a really great thing but as we've said before the milk carton program did more for the missing children Panic than it ever really did for the missing children themselves missing children like their heart was in the right place the intentions were good but it was phased out in the 90s as paper cartons were replaced by plastic jugs and efforts were ultimately concluded when the Amber Alert system was established and proven to be exponen po more successful at finding missing children within critical time frames yep that's been addressed in most of the documentaries that I've seen on the subject in general it's just the Amber Alert was that much better yes more effective but that isn't to say that the milk cartons never worked it did have some success and in one particular instance a kidnapped child recognized her own face on a milk carton in real life her name was Bonnie lman Bonnie's earliest memories are of moving around a lot with her mother and stepfather she lived in Hawaii she lived in sipan no matter where they lived she was kept secluded from other people and was rarely allowed to spend time Outdoors eventually they settled down in Colorado in the 1980s where Bonnie was finally allowed out in public while accompanying her stepfather to a local grocery store 7-year-old Bonnie suddenly realized she was famous why else would her picture be on all these milk cartons bless her heart she hadn't been taught to read yet so she couldn't spell out the words missing child but by some miracle her stepfather bought a carton of milk and even cut out the picture for her to keep although not without a warning to keep it a secret but she ended up leaving the picture with some toys at the house of a playmate whose parents found it and called the police who then intervened and returned Bonnie to her biological father and legal guardian wow so what had originally happened between her parents was a bitter custody battle that her father won and her mother came abducted her when she was only 3 years old but because it was obviously a non-custodial kidnapping the police considered the crime a domestic dispute and so very little effort was made to track her down so I know Cooney sites seeing the missing child poster in lagoria arport as the true inspiration for this book but I also know that every major publisher of every fiction novel requires the disclosure this is a work of fiction names characters places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are you fictitious ly any resemblance to actual persons living or dead events or locals is entirely coincidental we've all seen the fine print and I'm sure it's entirely coincidental that Janie does Wonder privately to herself if her mother is her mother and her father is her stepfather or vice versa the only thing I know for sure is Janie also keeps the milk carton depicting her likeness at 3 years old mhm she washes it clean flattens it out and keeps it tucked inside her English binder I mean wouldn't you every time she begins to doubt herself she takes it out to remind herself to keep searching for answers because if she doesn't nobody will nobody's coming to save you but yourself precisely and that is a life lesson for the ages in whatever circumstance so drink it up you lactose and Toler it [Music] kids so now that Janie has this strange impossible Forbidden Knowledge she she must continue going through the motions of her exceedingly normal Teenage life although everything is Now cast in a strange Sinister light like for example how her parents keep a million pictures of her around the house but none are from before the age five no baby pictures of baby Janie anywhere she spends less time with her friends and more time with reev the boy next door leading to the blossoming of their you know more romantic relationship cute while navigating the awkward tension hanging over every interaction with her parents Frank and Miranda Johnson I can't imagine trying to function in a circumstance like this because you can't trust your you know parental figures you begin to doubt not to say that that's necessarily an uncommon situation unfortunately but I would hope that a situation like this where you don't know if they're lying to you about your own Identity or not right um is less common and I want to read a passage that I feel best describes the development of Jan's moral struggle as well as the decline of heral Health throughout the story so after getting home from kissing reev and a a big pile of autumn leaves it's very romantic that is romantic Janie sighed and opened her book bag dumping the contents on her B her cheap blue cloth three- ring notebook fell out on top of the math biology American lit in world history books Janie opened the cover the back of the flattened milk carton stared up at her flour Dairy the dairy that cares 100% whole milk 1/2 p P She unclipped it turned it over Jenny spring looked up at her the 800 number was like a dart being thrown into her eyes I could call she thought I could ask but what could she ask all the questions were Unthinkable besides what would it do to her parents to find out their very own daughter was calling the authorities to announce she'd been kidnapped her mother who had spent the day baking a special cake her father who would come home from Soccer full of Victory and deflated by loss Janie picked up her phone she dialed one she dialed 800 she dialed 346 72 she was gasping for breath with two digits to go she hung up she missed the phone it cled slid off the bed and hit the floor with a crash as loud as trains colliding but her mother didn't yell upstairs to see if she was hurt up here it was the world crashing in downstairs nobody had heard a sound we've all been in moments like that all right get G up on yourself she thought I'll think about reev now I'll think about kisses and love and dating but she thought of Jenny spring of parents somewhere in New Jersey who missed their little girl so much that all these years later they were still hoping hoping by the thinnest thread they would somehow find their Jenny again and Jenny would be safe not murdered or raped or abused or happy and ignorant with another family this thought Janie must be what heavy drugs are like hallucinations whether you want them or not temperature changing personality changing Doses and here she tries to call a few friends but realizes she can't talk to them about this and can't tell them what's going on or the whole thing would get blown you know well possibly way out of proportion but maybe just to Curt the correct size proportions yeah so she's thinking the whole school would know that I actually believe I was kidnapped guidance Department would hear the rumors your daughter's hoping you're not her parents your daughter is planning to call the FBI on you your daughter's living in a sick twisted perverted daydream in which what if I can't get this horrible idea out of my brain what if it sits there and grows like some terrible egg splitting open and turning into something real that that isolation of having this humongous secret that changes your whole entire life and you can't take it anywhere you can't take it to your friends either she's officially spending all of her time inside of her head it's consuming she goes from living a normal life to like yeah this the mental health you know struggles that you and I both have unfortunately although we you know haven't been in these shoes exactly we can relate to something that totally consumes our waking thoughts and sometimes our subconscious and sleeping thoughts and we can't get out from under it and it's not fun nope nope nope the spirals the spiral the spirals it's reminiscent of like how OCD feels like certain ideas are kind of contaminated or like and and in her case it's happening throughout her entire life she can't look at any any piece of her life safely because any piece of her life that she looks at is going to take her back to this idea that she may or may not be really who she thinks she is like none of it's going to feel real the the derealization and depersonalization from right right just seeing her Face on the Milk Carton World rocking I can't imagine yeah because like at that point even to look at something you've seen a million times you're now questioning it or like you see it differently like it's this whole yeah but how does that fit into this new Narrative of my learning something that goes back that far anything that's been built on top of this Foundation is now in question I forget what it was but there's one part she's like this has been one of my favorite things since when when did this become part of my life when was I first introduced to this it would you would unravel like your your personality depending on you know the support that you are or aren't given I guess in a circumstance like this you're personality would unravel because you wouldn't trust yourself because you don't know yourself and speaking of not trusting yourself or any of the things around you I think it's time we talked about Janie's parents Mr Johnson is an accountant who coaches little league soccer in the fall pillar of the community no doubt while Mrs Johnson volunteers at a hospital twice a week pillar of the community no doubt Jan's mom is very enthusiastic about finding creative motherdaughter activities like cake decorating classes over compensation and her dad has some serious Hang-Ups about keeping Janie young and keeping his wife skinny by that I mean making comments about watching her weight by not eating the cake in their cake decorating class I didn't think of a joke fast enough but I just wanted to be like he's a male you mean he's a man in fact you know there's a fair amount of fat shamming in this book it's all meant to be funny uh but it comes across harsh when viewed through a modern lens I mean even viewed through those lenses it was harsh people just accepted it the diet culture yeah is a whole other dark Rabbit Trail but and when it comes to keeping Janie young not only does her father resist societal Norms like teaching her how to drive but his gestures of endearment toward Janie suggest he sees her as a little girl like calling her kitten and always touching her hair and twirling it around in his fingers m- it's almost shocking to me that he's so willingly lets her go off with reev a high school senior although he does make the awkward comment that reev is allowed to eat dinner at their house as long as he sleeps at his own cool Mr Johnson thanks no problem I mean I'm deciding if I want to get up on a soapbox or not the hyp sexualization and over sexualization of teenage girls by their parents or father in this whole culture is a huge problem because they defend virginity which is a social construct more than they defend the person yeah they defend the idea that this the Purity belongs to them it's a societal issue and it's mhm not cool and despite their shortcomings the Johnson seem very available to Janie and attentive to her needs so the Shadows don't begin to creep in until Janie suspects that her parents are actually her kidnappers this shift in tone despite coming early in the novel really darkens all the different colors of her everyday life like we were talking about for example she walks next door to ree's house one afternoon to ask his mom if she remembers when the Johnson's moved in she does of course and describes Jan's mom as being extremely strict and overprotective too many Dreadful possibilities out there mothers have nightmares about their babies Janie from drowning in a neighbor swimming pool to snapping their spine playing football I think all mothers fear that that one Dreadful accident when the child dashes out in front of a truck when some Maniac snatches the child during the one second the mother isn't looking your mother has always felt that way Janie she's always been afraid afraid someone's going to do to Jamie what she already done perhaps maybe already done thing in her mind but I will agree that a lot of mothers feel this way I think my mother felt this way I understand it I really do if any darklings out there if you know Hank and John Green who are incredible some of my favorite thinkers of Our Generation they're amazing Hank Green recently did a standup comedy special on the Dropout Network which is like it was a YouTube channel now they have their whole like their own own app and their own platform basically where they do and produce a bunch of different shows and games and it's really cool but Hank did a comedy special for Dropout and it is amazing but he does a whole bit on this exact thing where moms basically go to bed at night and all they can think about are the just hundreds of ways that their child could die that's just what they do when they lay their head on their pillow at night um and we laugh at it but I think that there is some degree of truth to it like of course yeah you're responsible for a life and the way that that stays with you for some people some anxiously attached people possibly this would become rumination mhm absolutely very easily so you know when viewed through a lens of abduction Miss Johnson is one creepy lady MH same with Mr Johnson's infantilization of Janie we begin to wonder what sort of depraved resentments he might secretly have about her getting older so that coupled with what you said earlier about him sexualizing her but also wanting to protect her sexuality to the point of like bringing things up that nobody was even talking about exactly why did why would you say that Mr Johnson that's a there joh he re was not going to ask to stay the night he wasn't going to sneak over more than likely um but now that I know it was it was the 90s I mean yeah it's just like all this stuff begins to look differently MH well coone is doing a really good job of giving the reader she's giving you SE reasons and opportuni to doubt absolutely it's a suspense thriller I mean this is what she's here to do it's well crafted Jan's relationship with her parents first becomes strained when Mrs Johnson dismisses her request to see her birth certificate this is where the whole learning to drive story line becomes significant because Janie won't be able to get a driver's license without her birth certificate her mother says it's in a safe deposit box at the bank she's too busy to go today and tomorrow the bank is closed so Janie insists they go Monday which leads to an argument that results in her mother gaslighting her by telling her to stop being ridiculous you're being difficult you're being a problem your simple request that I am refusing I'm avoiding to accommodate is the issue I'm the one being evasive so now it's more than just a picture on a milk carton she's seen the effects of the abduction in real time and while Janie is pulling away from her parents or perhaps because she's allowing herself the room to think and process she begins to exhibit the recovery of repressed memories which manifest as Visual and auditory flashbacks that she calls daymares because she refuses to believe that they are actual real memories therefore they must be hallucinations or nightmares that she's having while awake brought on by some Demon because she researches the etymology of nightmare and sees the word demon so she plays up the whole demon concept is like me yeah her first day Mar comes from the same day she sees herself on the Milk Carton reev picks her up from school and after driving around a while they go for ice cream on the way home she turned to look at her Sunday the world shifted the shop seemed to spin around her all its flavors all its booths tilting and screaming she was sitting with somebody else sitting on a high stool a stool that swiveled she was turning herself slowly and carefully by holding on to the counter her feet did not touch the foot rest she was little she was admiring her white cotton socks as she turned because they had a little strip of lace a woman next to her not swiveling long straight hair cascading down the woman's back so pretty Janie had to touch it the woman kept her hand in the air behind Jan's back so she wouldn't tip off the spinning stool Janie was having a Sunday whipped cream on it eating the Cherry off her Sunday first and then the one off the woman Sunday they were laughing Janie was little the woman hugged her swung her around as the stool had swung there was a hot wind they were outside now in a huge parking lot maybe the biggest parking lot in the world her dress white with tiny dark dots blue in the air and that's when reev snaps her out of her trance because she's basically having a panic attack I mean who wouldn't and later at ree's house she has another daymare triggered by the sight of an apron apron it was white heavy almost as heavy as canvas it had a bib her mother kept little hard candies in one pocket and Janie could stretch up and reach her baby hand into the pocket to take out one candy with a cellophane wrapper that crinkled but my mother doesn't wear aprons thought Janie and after the first fight with her mom about her birth certificate she has another daymare about two screaming babies in the kitchen getting all the attention while she tries to ask for a glass of milk nobody hears her so she ends up trying to pour it herself spills it on the floor and then cleans it up all by herself and these flashbacks keep coming for most of the story but she has just one more before the truth is revealed at the halfway point she's at the mall with her mom and the twins which we know to be the two screaming babies from her previous memory she gets mad at her mom for not buying her something so she storms off by herself oh no she wanders into the ice cream shop or the diner or whatever it is where the mysterious woman sits next to her and buys her a sunde did I mention how ironic it is that she's now lactose intolerant there's so much Dairy mentioned in this story well it's it's like maybe that's the root of the trauma like there are a lot of people that believe that we develop these conditions based on how our body internalizes things that happen to us I was thinking that too I have had it's in remission currently knock on wood but I had a thyroid condition and some people say thyroid conditions can come from feeling like you're not heard or you can't speak up or you don't have a voice for yourself yeah so in that same vein it kind of makes sense to me that she might become lactose intolerant because it was just at the beginning there it's like sympathetic psychology it's fascinating like sympathetic magic I like that she was like I'm just going to throw as much milk at this as I possibly can there's going to be a lot of milk there's going to be [ __ ] ton of dairy in this book I should have used the cow emoji for a post maybe I still will we have time this repressed memory comes just off the heels of Jan's most disturbing Discovery see she has the opportunity to attend a chaperon trip to Spain which means she will a passport which only increases the urgency of her need for her birth certificate so she takes it upon herself to search the house for the key to the safe deposit box so she can go to the bank herself which in reality I don't think would have worked anyway because I think you probably need ID mhm get into that at the it was the '90s yeah yeah maybe now most definitely but maybe not back then so she checks the drawers of her mother's desk and then makes her way up to the attic because she feels suddenly suspicious about a collection of boxes that she's always seen up there but never looked inside of so she goes through the boxes labeled after their initials J for Jane f for Frank M for Miranda she reminisces silently on old times and fond memories wishing desperately for the proof that her parents really are her parents but then she comes across a hidden black trunk labeled with an H she lifted the heavy lid carefully tilting it back against the wall the trunk was filled with papers and photographs she was immediately bored old school reports old term papers old fill-in theblank maps and quizzes somebody named Hannah she'd never heard of anybody named Hannah How could an unknown Hannah Merit this stack of attention Janie felt irritable and coughed again from a dust in the mothballs beneath the sixth grade report on the beginning of mankind Mesopotamia and a sheath of mimeographed maps where Hannah had wrongly pencell in Germany on France was a school photograph Jenny recognized the cardboard folder immediately the kind that offered your parents six different purchase agreements so many wallet sizes so many 8 by10 she flipped open to see what Hannah looked like a pretty girl perhaps 12 or 13 looked back at her sweet blonde mild from behind all the papers a little piece of fabric stuck up white cloth tiny dark polka dots with hands of ice Janie plucked at the material Shifting the layers of school papers until she could pull it up it was the dress on the Milk Carton I had so many thoughts in my head ring around I was like Hannah was the kid who was taking on the milk carton they have the dress that she was wearing in the picture if it was in the picture how was it on her when she was kidnapped what the hell is happening right now yeah I was doing the same thing as I was reading in real time to all of you I was definitely going like sci-fi with it I was like oh no is this another Watcher in the wood situation is there a time Loop there's always a Time Loop there's always a Time Loop damn it but really at the core of it what this tells Janie and us is that Frank and Miranda Johnson lost their daughter Hannah mhm and in their grief one or both of them decided to kidnap another little girl to replace her and raise her as their own and that's pretty dark it is pretty dark especially because it's partially true just not in the way we might think grief will make people do strange things but hopefully not this there's a reason you can't just walk into a hospital and just go take a child a baby because people do that all the time when Janie just can't stand it any longer and she storms into the house to confront her parents one day in the next chapter they have no choice but to tell her their side of the story For Better or Worse according to the Johnson Hannah is their daughter and Janie is Hannah's daughter um when Hannah was 16 she joined the Hari Krishna and eventually went to live in the quote unquote Temple commune in California where she was forced to marry another member and procreate she had a baby girl Jane wanting better for Jane she escaped the cult and brought her home to the Johnson's house they actually had a different last name at the time but they feared that the cult would come to claim their own so they changed their name and moved wherever Frank's company could transfer him Hannah eventually returned to the colt and the Johnson eventually moved into the house where they live today I think the inclusion of the cult narrative at the time would have given this story a lot of gravity mostly because Colts used to be a much more common topic of discussion within mainstream media and pop culture I was just listening to the Pod Meets World podcast episode on on cult fiction the episode where Shawn joins a cult yeah and they talked about how relevant it was at the time I mean and it's still around today technically there are more Cults than ever now the internet the internet has really helped the boom they're predominantly online yeah but they're they're called Boutique Cults because they're very Niche right you can be an a cult for whatever your belief is and find people that immerse themselves in the same thing but as far as I can tell and forgive me if I don't know much about this feel free to correct me and then I'll know more about harri Krishna history I mean there's debate on whether it's a cult at all first off that's the part that really confused me because there are Hari Krishna like Cults that stemmed off from the religion just like a lot of American Cults stemed offis Protestant Christianity so it's a very specific like they're not the same they are right like there is a Hindu movement Hari Krishna but then there is a branching off of that that is more cult-like in its right right right practice Hari Krishna is the name given to a unique branch of Hinduism that was founded specifically in the US in the 1960s and so like any cult concept would have been like a branch off of a branch so it's like you have a big tree Hinduism you got the big branch and then we got little Twigs yeah that's the Cults and then the leaves are the cult members and they flap in the wind isn't it cute no all right kids at school we're going to make a a Hindu Hari Krishna tree family tree family tree use your hands your palm is Hinduism your fingers the branches take that home to your Protestant Christian family put it on the fridge put it on the fridge we have magnets we have that's pretty dark magnets in our merch in our merch store you guys could have your kids back to school art underneath that's pretty dark magnet you can find on that's pretty dark.com we've never really done like a plug in the midst of episod merch for Merch but we do we do have some merch and magnet would be so fun for back to school would it not it would all right so the Hari Krishna Consciousness was brought over by a Swami named Bak tant I'm sure I said it wrong sounded right to me who began by converting hippies in New York City and if you've seen Mad Men you've seen this depicted and it kind of shows how crazy it would have seemed to the culture at at the time the Western culture this sect is unique mostly because it's mon theistic and believes Krishna to be the God of all Hindu gods it's heavy on Karma and reincarnation as well as the rejection of all Earthly Comforts making it an athetic cult or sect it's antiv violent and therefore vegetarian because animals have souls and it does more damage to you to kill the animal to eat it than it actually does to the to the animal it does more harm to you as a person to act in violence you're ingesting trauma essentially but that isn't to say that this sect or whatever you want to call it didn't have its flaws to quote britannica.com the Hari Krishna movement was among the first groups to be targeted by anti-cult organizations in the early 1970s during the 1980s it was frequently accused of brainwashing and anti-cult groups attempted to deprogram some Hari Krishna members claiming psychological and emotional damage several former members sued the organization unsuccessfully and this is the narrative that Frank and mirand Johnson bring to the table m in the book when they talk about it as a cult they say it completely changed Hannah to the point that she was like a silver spoon that needed polishing she was dull toneless and mechanical she never smiled it didn't just change her it ruined her and it stole their daughter away from them so they're pretty biased um and I don't know what to make of Hari Krishna I really don't I don't know that much about it I read that it is a branch of Hinduism that incorporates more like judeo-christian ideas with the monotheism and everything like it's that makes it more access a purely exactly to the like a pure Hindu sort of belief system correct yeah the cult or the you know the original branching it also gives power to females MH so you know it's it's it's it's an equal opportunity religion but the Johnson's explain that that's why they're afraid of you know Janie growing up and turning 16 because that's when they lost Hannah putting the their own trauma onto their next child they also don't have her birth certificate and they don't know what they're going to do about it or how she's going to get her driver's license these are just not things they've ever figured out or thought about probably thought about it but they're like Ah that's in the distant future and yeah as any parent or Guardian knows comes all too quickly they also continue perpetuating the trauma by begging her not to leave them the way Hannah did and she promises them that she won't that she is theirs and she will always be their daughter I'm thinking there's some ironic foreshadowing I'll never tell until the end of this episode [Music] XOXO and despite all this Janie still doesn't tell them about the Milk Carton and as a result is increasingly convinced that the story that they told her was a lie so the second half of the book is comprised of Janie continuing her search for the truth while doing a pretty poor job of pretending like everything is okay yeah taking one hell of a toll on her mental wellbeing been there Sarah Charlotte basically ends their friendship or at least gives her a really hard time about things reev eventually breaks up with her a the douche I wanted to like him and the Johnson start to see her as a troubled teen I mean she is troubled she is officially a troubled team for a few reasons but because she skipped school one day day she plays hookie with reev before they break up she convinces him to drive her to New Jersey to find her real family get ice cream in ConEd Gil more girls Jess and Rory so they stop at a phone booth to look up their address Brave Little Toaster style and they go spy on their house she literally watches her siblings get off the school bus and walk home all with the same crazy red hair that she has and the woman who opens the door to let them in also has red hair and Janie knows deep down that those are her siblings and that that's her mother I also want to point out that Cooney specifically says so they're not latch key kids she uses the word yeah my heart was warmed cuz I was like wow that was a term even in 1990 they were calling them latch key kids nice and it's throughout Janie's moral struggle during the second half that she does something that I've enjoyed calling a fraudi and whoopsy do the tone in which you just said that so seriously it's a it's a technical term sure see she's doing that thing we've all done where like you write a letter or a message to someone and you like you're not going to send it you're just going to like tuck it away and forget about it and then like it's cathartic in a way you feel better you know you can heal and move on from whatever that situation is without having to send it and like start all the drama and that's Jan's plan or at least that's what she tells herself she comes to a point where she accepts that whether or not the story was 100% true but Johnson's are not bad people they lost a daughter and to fill that void they chose to love Janie but she also knows that she has to tell the springs that she's alive and well because it would be cruel not to yeah to let them just go on you know not knowing what happened to to Jenny and there's some naive to that because she's thinking I could just let them know that I'm okay but it's not going to change my life or their life in any way you know she's a teenager thinking this not thinking of really the repercussions that could come with an admission that exactly what she does she's trying to reason through it and yeah she tells herself there won't be any criminal proceedings no one will press charges and I'll live my life out with the Johnson's happy as a clam it'll be fine yeah right this plot point is a cyclone of reservations and good intentions like a tornado that's already spun Halfway Around by the time she's made a decision to do one thing versus the other she plans to just tuck the letter you know in her binder with the milk carton but she ends up sealing it in an envelope that already has the Springs home address on the front and with the Johnson's return address in the corner good plan and here comes the whoopsy doo that seemed like a whoopsy doo already to me she misplaces the envelope whoops you do and she's immediately convinced that someone will come along put a stamp on it and mail it for her some good Samaritan she says so in her mind it's done mhm they're going to find out this is the point of no return and I see your face I see your speculation but we just said she's a teenager trying to reason through all these things so she doesn't know more than likely the letter is not going to get mailed it's probably in the trash somewhere oh to have that optimism I never even had it as a teenager I mean she's not being optimistic she's being pretty pessimistic she's very very concerned about this well the fact that it will eventually be mailed for her oh well by a Good Samaritan it's rather optimistic you know it's like people say the World used to be a much better place it's going to hell in a hand basket people used to talk to each other on the street and mail each other's letters when they found them send the nudes to the to each other to all their friends send the naked pictures to somebody they just met on the subway who's to say this isn't a better world I don't know I live apart from the world in a cave so I don't really have any idea you wouldn't you wouldn't know just sitting at home sipping my cold totties writing my little stories minding your beeswax reading my books and watching my movies and minding my own goddamn beeswax and your whoopsie do and shanie doesn't realize it but this mishap is exactly what she needed to happen she's been agonizing over what to do about all this like to the point that she's coming apart as she puts it she's barely eaten anything in like two weeks so she's basically developing an eating disorder she can't talk to anybody about it she's completely alone you know her friends can't know reev knows but he's a dick and he abandons her um because she doesn't do what he wants her to do so he breaks up with her I've known those circumstances and her parents par are so traumatized over Hannah that they don't know what to do to help Janie because they're so scared to do anything that it might push her away so losing the letter is like finding the valve that would release all this pressure for Janie's own sake this is the best possible outcom and so the whole story concludes with a cliffhanger involving ree's older sister Lizzie who is soon to be a lawyer after Janie gives her a call Lizzie draws her own conclusions based on the information available and since this is the final explanation of events I believe this is what Cooney fully intended to be the real true story of what happened I didn't know we were getting a cliffhanger today cave hanger oh we're getting a cave hanger today everything the Johnson's believe is true except one thing Janie isn't Hannah's daughter it was Hannah who abducted Jenny spring from that shopping center in New Jersey it was Hannah who took her home to her parents and said this is my daughter Jane leaving the Johnson to wholeheartedly believe that Janie was their granddaughter until now mhm now they know everything and after one hell of an emotional evening Miss Johnson goes to the phone and dials the number on the Milk Carton against Jan's wishes it's this gut-wrenching conclusion because once they pick up the phone all their lives are going to change forever you can't unknow that they keep going like well let's just do this and tell them and then it's done everything everything's done and Lizzie's like this is never done this is never going to be over or go away and all Janie can do like a nightmare is just cry and beg Mrs Johnson not to call them because she loves her parents the Johnson's and she isn't ready for everything to change just yet can't blame her but knowing better and trying to be a better parent Mrs Johnson hands her the phone and when Mrs Spring answers on the other end Janie says hi it's your daughter Jenny and quite literally that's all she wrote the story ends right there the end the end well thanks for listening guys um rate review subscribe thanks for being here in the forward that I mentioned earlier Cooney says I wanted my reader to go on worrying even after the book was over well thanks for that so the ending doesn't tell everything I don't like that I'm just going to say the way that she said it I as an author writer Creator artist of any kind I would love to have my reader viewer listener dear listener go on thinking about things that I've written or said sure I'm I'm okay with that idea that sounds lovely just to have that in your head to be haunting you pleasantly hopefully if you will as time goes on I don't want to make people worry themselves the word the use of the word worry I have a fundamental issue with yes because you worry about everything yeah who want to introduce more worry to the world I think that's just the word she chose I think so too but that's what I'm that's why I'm picking a bone because word choice I don't think worry is the word I hope not could have easily said you know wondering Wonder or whatever Ponder mhm consider contemplate not worry don't worry guys semantics but don't worry be happy but she also says I never planned to write more about Janie and her boyfriend reev but I changed my mind and as a result the face in the milk carton is just the first of five novels in the Janie Johnson series ah these books are what ever happened to Janie the voice on the radio what Janie founds and Janie Face to Face and there's even an ebook publication of a short story called what Janie saw that supposedly fits right in between books four and five and as mentioned before there was also a CB S TV movie made in 1995 which was a combination of this novel with its 90 with its 1993 sequel whatever happened to Janie this movie premiered on May 24th 1995 and it they changed the name Janie Johnson to Janie Jessman and her real life name was Jennifer Sans not Jenny spring so I don't know why they would make changes like that but they did okay it was a choice and it was starring Kelly Martin as Janie who did a lot of fun things with her career namely voicing Daphne Blake and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo a and roxan in A Goofy Movie hey I knew I knew that name I knew I knew it I knew that I did roxan roxan how you doing later she was in one episode of Madmen had a recurring role on ER and co-hosted the pilot of America's Funniest Home Videos alongside Bob Saget wow she was like 14 oh my God is that weird that's cool funny stuff funny stuff rest in peace Bob but yeah so that's how the book ends you've bookended it I book ended the book ending I don't know I have a lot of feelings about it too like I want to know at what point she chose not to make her parents like Sinister like she you know misled the audience the reader like like you want to do for things like this that's what you do but I wanted the reveal to be something just you know crazy I don't like that they were totally innocent bystander it's too it's wrapped up in too tight of a bow it's too pretty yeah this was a young adult novel yes like yeah it's it's young adult I guess you need to have that for young adult it was pretty dark but it was a young adult novel so I think she walked the line as best she could yeah like many things that we cover do like a lot of our areu Afraid of the Dark episodes do they kind of wrap it up much nicer than it would be wrapped up in real life one of the most beautiful things about young adult literature is it exists to not only remind teenagers that they're never really alone but to also teach teens the virtue of questioning the status quo reality may be perception yes but perception can be and often is intentionally skewed by those who have authority over us amen from politicians to teachers to role models influencers on the internet Camp counselors youth pastors Allah Camp Green Lake and dare I say our parents those who are given the right to speak into our lives at a young age usually do so with so much confidence that many of us never question whether or not they're correct or unbiased kind of like we said last episode children are susceptible to believing what other people tell them especially what adults tell them and especially when it's lies so much of the media we've covered on the show leans heavily into that idea that the adults don't always know what's going on they don't have all the answers and they don't always have our best interest at heart best case they help the kids figure out what to do worst case they're the ones praying on the children and perpetuating the issue in the first place and and the the danger again like withholds and we've seen examples of both the mystery surrounding Jane's identity which pushes her onto the path of literal self-discovery by forcing her to ask the hard questions like who am I no really who am I makes this book an obvious choice for classroom curriculums and summer reading lists it's also been lauded as a work that can help young adults with their development of moral reasoning predominantly because of its themes of questioning author Authority navigating difficult or strained relationships and taking matters into your own hands to figure out what the hell is going on and to do what needs doing despite being dismissed belittled and insulted for refusing to Simply go with the flow just to make things easier for everyone else around you mhm so in summary it's okay to question reality especially when you know deep down something is wrong don't settle for complacency keep searching keep learning you just might make the discovery of a lifetime snaps but hopefully it's not that you were abducted at the age of three hopefully not that hopefully different discoveries about yourself about others connection hopefully all good good things things not that that's really all I've got about The Face on the Milk Carton what a ride what a ride I didn't know what to expect coming into this and it's really interesting that we're finding so many of the same themes that we just talked about you know with holes and throughout our pretty dark summer I love when all the themes line up like it's it feels like magic it's all very serendipitous love that Serendip and yeah I haven't I never read this book until last week so I didn't know either wow the odds are ever in our favor sometimes on occasion rarely AKA not ever and rarely always on Cooney's website there's a page that lists her Awards and recognition for The Face on the Milk Carton and there are a lot of them but I want to point out the very top award slre nition number 29 top 100 band and challenged books 2000 to 2009 hey for references to kidnapping Cults challenges to Authority and teenage sexual activity I just love that that's at the top of her list that's the badge of honor that she wears this is she's she's a woman after my own heart I love her it would be on my website would be writer of band books it would be like this is my identity this is my title do R and Janie like get it on mhm they do okay there was scamm there was so much that I had to pick and choose what to cover but you know I didn't want to make this a two-part series but she's spends a lot of time in her head uh thinking about reev longing after him lusting after him pining and when they go to New Jersey on the way home they're already late they're already thinking what are we going to do to tell our parents and they both agree our parents are going to think that we like got a like a motel room or something and just had sex and so they agree to go to a motel and and just do it whoa but they don't Janie changes her mind cuz she's not in the right heads space cuz she just saw her real life biological family so she's not really into it today ree stop trying to force your own agenda yikes okay yeah I don't like him anymore every single time they get in the car to go somewhere he takes her to Scenic Overlook also known as sexual Overlook yeah they call it what are they sexual over look it's terrible what do they always call spot it's always like the lovers lane yeah like that kind of thing yeah get bring in the I think is is what's known here comes the good loving I think that's the man of the golden hook for an arm we know that one things like that the golden Hook is a euphemism for losing your hand thank you for spelling that out and then deciding not to losing your hand and having it replaced by a golden hook yeah damn well I don't know I was just I wondered because we mentioned Hank Green earlier John Green has been on the band book list for things like that in um young adult fiction so yeah she's pretty Unapologetic we're all about discussing how these things are developmentally important and appropriate in the right circumstance and and it's the kind of thing where this may be the exposure that a that a young adult might get to sexuality right so there's a lot of responsibility there in how it is presented but also the reality of how that can sometimes go how there can sometimes be teen boys pushing their own agenda yeah he does quite a bit I don't like reev at all no but it's good to see it in that perspective to to be able to look at that objectively and for sure parse out for yourself as a teenager what's not okay about that but like for these reasons being number 29 on this list I just want to point out the titles that it it beat oh on the top 100 it beat Goosebumps A Wrinkle In Time the handmaid's tail The Lovely Bones the lovely B fahit 4551 The Kite Runner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest slaughterhouse 5 and Brave New World people thought that this book was worse this book was worse than those than all of those W some of the most notoriously yeah uh challenged books of all time B wow and this beats them wow for a decade well a bunch of our darklings have just opened their Amazon Tab and they're ordering it yeah hell yeah man I love it so anyway it's a good time um kudos to You Caroline bonei we love you hope you're doing well out there here here go to her website send her a lovely message let her know that you're thinking about her but no Lovely Bones yes yes don't mention The Lovely Bones lots of beef between oh these right I have no idea I'm joking okay I was about to say I didn't know what I stepped in I'm stirring the pot hopefully not some lovely Bon I'm bubbling The Cauldron if you will it's at this point in our show that we usually say thank you to some other folks as well yeah our patrons patrons yeah on patreon patreon.com tpd podcast nailed it where people give us money to say thank you for doing the show and reminding them that they're not alone that's it and you guys remind us of that at the same time and it's a really beautiful little wonderful symbiotic thing where you guys get fun episodes and access to some fun behind the-scenes stuff that we always promise to share more of and always struggle to do but we we know that you're there and it means more than we can express thank you so much yeah it's on my to-do list big to-do list the next couple weeks and we have to shout out our newest patrons BJ and whispered 195 whispered we don't often have usernames rather than people's Nam so thank you both so much for um your contributions to our patreon you make it possible for us to keep our flashlights on keep our batteries running and yeah buddy keep making this um pretty dark stuff thanks guys thank you for being here with us through the pretty dark summer we hope your back to school season is going well whether you yourself are schooling or you are um assisting others in that endeavor we can't wait because this is like you said at the beginning when we are gearing up for the most wonderful time of the year the most and that is spookiest time spookiest of the Year we're getting all of that prepared for you right now we've got a few other episodes before then we've got some more Are You Afraid of the Dark which I know is U exciting for everybody we love being back around the campfire some fun surprises hopefully before we begin our October Marathon dude so I'm so pumped this is like one of the best transitions from Summer to uh to Autumn that we we've had and we had a a pretty good one last year so uh with watch in the woods I think that I think that was our big transition it's when the summertime sunshine just gets a little bit muted bit dmer and you you notice that there's just a little bit more of a breeze than there was yesterday don't get me too excited I going go to sleep tonight thank you for being here dear dear sweet darklings we cannot wait to be back in your ears ASAP that's right guys thanks for listening and remember you're never really alone m- not even if you don't know who you are not even then even then look go to the grocery store buy a carton of milk do the gallon challenge drink the entire gallon run around the grocery store please please no if you don't throw up your identity is secure yeah I was about to say I don't know what you win I don't know why anybody ever did that I don't think anybody ever made it without throwing up mm it's the only way to find out I oh my so get going we're giving terrible advice today get the Chug and guzzle it down bye guys thanks for listening to that's pretty dark written and produced by Christian Baxter M and kayin Andrews our music is composed by Jonathan Simmons and our art is provided by Paige Garland at Powergirl illustration join the collective Nostalgia and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at that's pretty dark podcast share your experiences and let us know what shows films or villains still haunt you from childhood at that's pretty dark podcast gmail.com remember you're never really alone so until next time sweet dreams everyone [Music]