One Too Many Scary Movies

When I was 15, I watched the movie Scream.  Shortly thereafter, I awoke one lazy summer morning and headed downstairs.  Our cat, Bayne, bolted up the steps right as I was going down.  I chalked that up to him getting a wild hair up his rear.  Sometimes you really never know with cats.  No less than 2 minutes later, I found out why Bayne had run off so quickly.

I was seven feet from our garage and basement door.  They were right next to each other in my parent's house.  Out of nowhere I hear this, 'BANG! BANG! BANG!' on the garage door.  I grabbed the cordless phone, which I may have already had in my hand at that point, and ran upstairs to my room, closed the door, ran into my windowless, 'no potential of escaping if I needed to' closet, closed that door, and called the police.  (I, clearly, would not have survived if I was in a scary movie.)

I swore someone was trying to break in.

The officer kept me on the phone and made me describe the situation and what was going on while a deputy in a cop car was on his way.  I explained it 84 times, it felt like, when finally an officer showed up.  The dispatcher on the phone said, 'Ma'am, do you have a brother?'

I said, 'Yes. He is in his room sleeping.'  (Why it didn't dawn on me to run in there and wake him up is beyond me.)

The dispatcher replied with, 'It appears that he is locked out of your house and is trying to get in.'

'What?!' I exclaimed.  Shocked, because I honestly did think he was in his room sleeping, and then confused because he had the code to the garage and there was a hidden door key in there, AND because I was home so if he had knocked normally, I could've easily let him in.

I walked downstairs.  It turns out that it was my brother.  Banging on the garage door with a metal baseball bat.  (Imagine hearing that and not knowing what it was.  That is exactly why I called the Po-Po.)

I let him in, got off the phone with the dispatcher, apologized to the officer, and called my Mom crying because my brother had just scared the living daylights out of me.  That was the last time I decided I would be watching scary movies.  I didn't need any more help imagining what was on the other side of things.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask?  Well, last night I went for a run.  I was probably 4 minutes into my run, when I saw a maniac lady (she seriously did NOT look happy) back out of her driveway in a mini van, back directly into a parallel parked car on the streets, and then completely drive off, as if nothing happened.  I didn't know what to do.  I looked around but no one was outside and no one was calling for me and/or the suspect in the hit and run.  So I kept on running, but for the rest of my run I kept envisioning the loony lady driving up next to me in the mini van with her accomplices and "getting me" since I, essentially, was the sole witness. 

THEN, 5 minutes after that, I saw a book and a juice bottle laying in the grass on the side of the sidewalk.  As I ran past, I saw that it was Charlotte's Web, but before I started reminiscing about childhood, I was scanning the area for a little someone whose book and juice bottle that may have belonged to.  No one was around.  And then I started envisioning someone sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, reading about Wilbur and Charlotte's adventures, when an unmarked car pulls up next to them and...  I'll stop.  I don't know what happened, but my mind wanders far enough away from me that I don't need to know what happened.  Everything was probably fine.  I just happened to run by at a weird time.

I made it home safely without any drive-bys or kidnappers hunting me down because I was a witness.  But these are both clear examples of why, fourteen years ago, I took the 'scary movie' genre off of my viewing list.  Sometimes I don't even like seeing the previews to new movies coming out.  I know it is sad.  Sad, but true.  I am a scaredy cat, and I don't need movies to assist in my cowardice. 

Sometimes life is scary enough!