Scared Straight
About the time my blood-curdling scream shattered my husband's eardrums, I realized I probably should have stayed home.
I hate being scared. I spent my childhood convinced a scaly monster with sharp talons lived under my bed waiting to grab my dangling foot and drag me to my death. I don't know why he stayed under the bed. I think my comforter offered some magical protection.
As a result (and after decades of screaming in the middle of the night) I don't watch horror movies.
I remember the first time I watched a movie that scared the bejeebies out of me ("bejeebies" means "urine"). I was a little tyke innocently taken to a double-feature, drive-in movie with my parents and little sister. We all watched as Barbra Streisand chased a plaid suitcase through the streets of San Francisco (no, that wasn't the horror movie) and laughed uproariously at a plot I didn't understand. The SECOND movie was the one that did me in.
My dad wanted to stay for the second feature (he liked scary movies), my mom wanted to leave (she knew she'd be the one answering our 2 a.m. shrieks). I was too tired to care. I snuggled up in the backseat and fell asleep—until I awakened to a scene involving a skeleton, a knife and dissolving flesh. I didn't see what caused the flesh to melt off the corpse, I just remember a grinning skeleton with a knife in its chestal area.
I was never the same.
A few years later, I went to see "King Kong" and was thoroughly traumatized when Kong ripped a giant snake in half (I don't do blood well.) Luckily, my ear-splitting scream was covered by the other shrieks in the theater. This moment of illusion was shattered when my dad said, "Nope. You're the only one that screamed."
I'm a slow learner. I sat through "Poltergeist," "Amityville Horror" and "The Shining" and vowed to never have children, buy a clown doll, own a home or shack up in an abandoned hotel with Jack Nicholson. I also swore off horror movies.
Which brings me to the blood-curdling scream. Because my wheel of life is missing a few spokes, my daughter LOVES scary movies. She wants me to watch things that will give me nightmares in the middle of the day.
She begged me to see "Insidious," a movie about a little boy plagued by demons (like most children). I read the review to make sure it didn't contain, a) blood, b) skeletons with knives in their chests or c) Jack Nicholson, and decided I could give it a shot.
Fast forward to me screeching in the theater, embarrassing those I love.
I spent the entire movie watching the screen through my hand-over-the-eyes filter, because peering through my fingers negates the level of scary. Even that didn't stop me from showering the people around me with popcorn when I jumped 20 feet or from running in place on the back of the seat of the person in front of me for 30 seconds or so. Sorry bout that, sir. I think I even lost some "bejeebies."
The aftershocks of the movie are the worse part. The "I see ghosts walking down the hall" trauma and the "face in the mirror and/or window" shock lasts for days. So no more. My mind, and my husband's ears, can't take it.
For more Life and Laughter, visit Peri's blog at https://perikinder.wordpress.com.
