When You Were Just a Young Girl and Still in School

Here's a photo of a weird 70's looking building where the Cambus stops by the Rec Building. Of course, this photo has nothing to do with my post.

I have been a bad sleeper lately. So, tonight I'm working extra special hard at getting my ass in bed at a decent hour. Hopefully, tonight I won't get a drunken text sent out to everyone on his phone by my friend C. letting us know he's coming to town on Thursday night, like I did last night at one in the morning. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph. Oh yeah, so in the interest of an earlier bedtime, I'm posting another thing from my old blog. It's kind of a companion piece to my list of cheesy 70's music from last night. There is one little change I will add to it, I've had some nightmares in the last couple of years since I wrote this.

This was originally written in April of 2006:

When I was a kid I was terrified of everything. At an early age, I was scared of the Wizard of Oz (especially that one scene - you know, where Auntie Em turns into the witch in the crystal ball?). Then I was afraid of the Vietnam war. After a while, my mom wouldn't let me watch the news because it freaked me out so much. They kept showing little kids all bloody and crying. I also thought that every clock I heard was a ticking bomb.

Then when I was about 7 or so, The Exorcist came out. Everything about it terrified me. The commercials were torture and the soundtrack...Oh my god, Tubular Bells made me want to buy a new umbilical chord and reattach myself to my mother. For years after, I had horrible nightmares about the devil. They were always the same. In my dream, I would be possessed by the devil and then realize I was in a dream and think I woke up, but I was really still asleep and then satan would hold me down and cover my mouth so no one could hear me scream.

It was partly my fear and partly my hyper-spazziness (I'm pretending this is a word), that kept me from sleeping when I was younger. I would lie in my room and hear my mom out in the living room either painting and listening to music or too tired to do anything but stare at the TV. As long as she was awake, I was fine. After she went to sleep, then Linda Blair, the Viet Cong and satan could all get at me. Most nights I would be so scared, I'd end up sleeping in my mom's room anyway.

In college I finally saw The Exorcist for the first time and I did think it was scary. But then I watched the second one and it was so cheesy and laughable that it took some power away from the original. Plus, the fact that Linda Blair dated both Rick Springfield and Rick James made me feel more sorry for her than frightened of her (it also steered me away from dating anyone named Rick).

Even as an adult, I still had the scary devil dreams. They were almost exactly the same ones I had when I was eight. Then when I was 31, I got divorced and became a single parent. I was always the last one awake in the house after that, but somewhere in there I stopped having nightmares. I can't even remember the last time I had one. I'm not sure what changed, but I'm totally cured of them. I'm still frightened of things - right now, the tornado sirens are my biggest fear...I'm also ascairt of boys, but unfortunately, none of them have kept me up all night for a long time.