Halloween

It's October. The time for jack-o-lanterns, candy and scary movies.
I'm a wuss when it comes to scary movies....as we learned from my last post. I employ all the pitiful ways to watch them: The Long Blink, the Finger Fan, The Eye Squint etc.
Yet, in the spirit of Halloween, I decided to give scary movies another try. I don't know why, exactly.
I do this every year and every year I lie to myself.
"It won't be that scary."
"It will be fun!"
False.
I should have known that this year would be no different.
I revisited Halloween a few days ago. It was on T.V. and I figured it was a great time to face my fears.
I watched it.
With all the lights on.
And only through my peripherals.
I just didn't have the fortitude to keep my eyes looking directly at the screen. It took me a while to really get in to the movie. I kept switching the channel when the scary music started playing. I watched a good chunk of the original and was proud of myself. It turned out that there was a marathon of all the Halloween movies so I figured.....why not watch more? My heart rate is already elevated....all this adrenaline might help me lose a few pounds. So I continued to watch, and the fear eventually subsided enough to where I could actually look at the screen.
Turns out, the movies aren't that bad.
You know what, though?
I'm still scared of the dark.
And curtain-less windows.
In fact, I closed all my curtains when I went to bed and considered barricading my closet shut with my bookcase.
But that would've been too much work....and I was already safely under my covers. I wasn't going to risk the chance of something under my bed grabbing me when I got up.

Besides...I had my nightlight.....

Story Time

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I was invited to a sleepover at Angelina's house. Angelina and I weren't friends. At least, we never played together at recess, and she never invited me over to her house to do anything. I don't even remember getting an invitation.
I think I was a pity invite.
Because I wasn't really friends with Angelina, I didn't want to spend the entire night there. My mom said she'd come and pick me up around 11:00 or so. The plan was to play games and have dinner then watch a couple movies until everyone fell asleep. There were two movies that Angelina's mom rented for us. One was Twister, and the other was Halloween.
You know...Michael Myers Halloween.
Everyone wanted to watch Halloween first, to get the scary movie out of the way so they could all fall peacefully asleep to Twister, which was less scary.
Great idea.
We started the movie, turned out the lights and the fun began. My friend Danielle (who was actually my friend) and I seemed to be the only ones affected by this movie. We were screaming at all the scary parts, which were basically the entire 104 minutes, covering each others eyes and burying our faces in the backs of whoever was sitting next to us.
I think Danielle started crying at one point.
Or maybe that was me.
Everyone else appeared to be okay with what they were watching. One girl was laughing like it was the greatest comedy of all time. Halfway through, I guess some of the girls were getting annoyed with me and Danielle screaming and told us that if we were scared we should go into the other room. We did....but playing Barbie with Angelina's baby sister seemed stupid so we made our way back to the living room.
I was sitting right by the sliding glass door, which didn't have curtains, and Angelina's Doberman kept running up and scaring the pee right out of me. I had never been so scared in my entire life.
(Except for that time I went to a haunted maze my friend's gymnastics class put on. Some guy in a Jason mask popped out at me and I hit him with my pumpkin bucket I was using to collect my candy. I lost all my candy.)
Once the movie was over, I released my death grip on Danielle's arm and she wiped her remaining tears on my sleeve. Everyone was like,
"Oh, that was awesome!"
"Did you see Danielle crying?"
"Chelsea, did you wet your pants?"
We all pulled ourselves together and put Twister on to calm our nerves.
About five minutes into the movie, my mom showed up. I cried the whole way home.
I stayed up the rest of the night watching Scooby-Doo with my mom.
And that's how I became afraid of the dark. And curtain-less windows at night.

The End