Friday the 13th

My brother on Halloween in the late 80’s.

Be sure to avoid all black cats, ladders, mirrors and guys with ski masks today.  Knock on all the wood you can find, and keep your eyes peeled for pennies on the sidewalk cause you’re gonna need all the good luck you can get….it’s Friday the 13th!In actuality, I’m not really the superstitious type.  What comes to mind for me everytime this day roles around the classic 80’s movie named after this day.  I would be willing to bet most people born in the 1990’s or earlier will also think about a very creepy guy named Jason, at least once today.

Scary movies and I aren’t friends.  They pretty much scare the bejeezus out of me.   A scary movie doesn’t just scare me when I am sitting in the theater.  My terror continues well into the night when I am snuggled all comfy, cozy in my bed with the covers pulled all the way up over my head.  You have to be completely under the covers because it’s a fact that if the monsters come for you, they can only get you if any part of you is outside of the covers! 🙂

Once I actually fall asleep, that doesn’t mean I am safe.  One of my most memorable nightmares was due to a scary movie that I hadn’t even seen.  It was 1999 and my roommate at the time, Becky, had just come back to our apartment after seeing “The Blair Witch Project“.  There was quite a bit of buzz about this movie when it came out.  I was a little bit curious about it, even though I had no plans to ever see it myself so I asked her to tell me about it.  She must have described the ending particularly well because later that night, I dreamed my very own disturbing version of the ending.  AHHH!!!  I woke me up in a heightened state of sheer panic.  My heart was beating a million beats a minute and I think I might have even screamed out.  I literally couldn’t even take my head out from under the covers the rest of the night cause I was terribly certain the Blair Witch was somewhere in my bedroom waiting for me!!  It was awful!!!

As you can well imagine, I don’t end up watching too many scary movies.  I’ve honestly never even seen Friday the 13th in its entirety.  I’ve only caught small bits and pieces of it over the years.  Of the scary movies I have seen, the scariest would have to be “Candyman.”  Alicia and I went and saw it together when we were in High School.  Why we did this is kind of a condundrum for me.  We didn’t go see it with a date.  (We did see “The People Under the Stairs” with dates, but that was so completely cheesy it didn’t scare me one bit, besides I was so nervous sitting next to a guy in a darkened theater that I wasn’t able to pay much attention to the movie anyway.)  Maybe it was a moment of bravery on my part, but whatever the reason behind going to see Candyman was, I was so spooked afterwards I wouldn’t let Alicia leave my side the rest of the day.  I mean that literally, too.  Bathrooms have mirrors in them, you know, and mirrors have the Candyman in them!  She was even such a good sport that she slept over and didn’t complain one bit that I had left my overhead light blazing bright all night.

These days, I tend to steer clear of the scary movies which leaves my husband, who enjoys them all by himself if he wants to watch one. (One of his other enjoyments is scaring me as much possible.  As you would imagine, this isn’t very hard to do at all!)  I have to tell you, I feel like a total wussy being in my thirties and completely terrified of something, as silly as, a make believe movie.

Maybe it’s time to see if I can get past my irrational fears of Hollywood monsters?  I wonder if  having become older and wiser,  I can make it through the entire film without screaming and running out of the room.  I can’t promise I won’t be watching the majority of the movie through the cracks of my fingers covering my eyes, but I’d like to at least give scary movies another go.  I’m pretty sure that most movies which scared me from my childhood probably wouldn’t today so I could proably get through most of them unscathed.  If you have recommendations for some really good scary movies leave me a comment, just don’t say Paranormal Activity, because I can’t even watch the previews for that one without being completely freaked out!

~Chrissy