Scaredy Cat

There's a vampire movie paused on my TV, and I'm anxious to get back to it.  This immediately follows my first viewing of The Blair Witch Project---yes, I'm only about 15 years behind.  The best thing I can say about that movie is that no one will ever, ever remake it (though the current trend is to remake EVERY movie more than 10 years old).

Now, if you knew me when I was under 30 or so, you might be a little surprised that I'm watching witch and vampire stuff.  Frankly, I'm a little surprised myself. 

I was known---WIDELY known---all the way into adulthood as the most chicken-shit spooky movie watcher in the world.  There were a few people who took a great, terrifying pleasure in scaring the hell out of me when we watched anything that could be considered scary.  I was easily spooked even when the movie wasn't scary!  Notably, I remember when my cousin Bettina and I saw Beverly Hills Cop at the Allred Theater in Pryor when I was about 20 or so.....and I screamed (loudly) when Eddie Murphy got shot.   Bettina slumped down in her seat like overcooked spaghetti; it was her hometown, after all, and she knew quite a few people there that night.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure we ever went to a movie together again after that. 

My nervous-Nellie-ness goes waaay farther back than that, though.  I don't know what tipped her off, but my mother didn't let me watch anything, ANYthing, the least bit scary.  No, that's not true:  I do remember her and Theda Rae, the neighbor who babysat me, watching a scary movie on TV one night when I was very young.  I remember sitting on Theda Rae's lap for part of it.  The movie was about a girl who was a Satan worshiper.  I can picture this scene so clearly, though it had to be around 47 years ago.  The girl was asleep in her bed with a candle burning.  There would be a shot of her sleeping, then the table by the bed with her photograph and the candle...then a shot of a statue of Satan standing there in her room.  Repeat:  sleep, photo, statue; sleep, photo.....and the statue, its glittering eyes turning to look at the girl in her bed! 

I blame this movie for a lot of my Satan-terror when I was a kid, but also for the Hershey's-syrup-and-purple-satin-bedroom nightmare (that's in an earlier blog) that makes me laugh just a little too maniacally these days.

But after that, I wasn't allowed to watch even things on TV that were scary.  Remember that TV movie that Elizabeth Montgomery did in the late 70's where she played Lizzie Borden?  I remember being banned from the family room that night because there was NO WAY Mom was going to let me watch that.  I sat in the living room, pocket doors closed, contentedly reading a book and eating popcorn.  But I'm still a little pissed off about missing that movie.

When I went off to college, of course, there weren't nearly the kinds of movies we have now.  But I just about refused to see all scary things; I'm not sure I saw Halloween or many other psycho killer things, but I know I saw Nightmare on Elm Street....stupidly.  Freddy Kruger was the perfect sort of villain for my brand of hysteria.  Shoot, even bad Stephen King stuff, like Salem's Lot, scared the shivers out of me.  The original George Romero Night of the Living Dead---oh, crimeny.  It makes my eyes water even now to think about how bad that freaked me out...or maybe it just makes my eyes water in embarrassment to admit that such a BAD movie scared me.

Somehow, though, I guess life teaches you there are much, much scarier things than vampires and zombies.  Ghost Hunters started it, and then various other TV shows got me more desensitized to the supernatural.  And then one day I noticed that my DVR was full of True Blood, Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and other oh-so-charming pieces of modern culture.  Maybe I have lost my fear of those things because I'm long past childhood, the refuge of the mysterious and unexplained.  Maybe I just outgrew the fear.  Possibly I'm scarier than anything I think could ever come after me!  Or perhaps it's just the medication: better living through chemistry. 

This is not to say I don't believe in the supernatural.....well, a little.  But that's another blog.  Besides, my big bubba tom cat just heard a noise and went off growling to protect me, so I'm pretty safe.  And I have to find out what's going to happen to the vampires who are running out of their blood supply on Daybreakers.  Don't tell me how it ends----and don't call my phone and scare me into screaming.  You know who you are.