Scary Movies

 Nights were often hard for me when I was young.  I would get scared of the dark when laying in my bed and the rest of the house was sleeping.  It wasn't brought on by scary movies.  It seems like it was just my imagination running wild.  Though I wonder if it did have something to do with the TV I watched at night with themes that were probably more mature that I could handle.  Or maybe it was the scary stories that I would read in a few books we had laying around but never fully seemed to read.  Or hearing scary stories from other kids in the neighborhood or wherever.  

There was one night that I remember getting particularly scared from a movie.  David and Angie lived behind the hog house along Hwy 100 in a mobile home.  On this night plans were made for me to spend the night there after, some kind of family get together.  I was to sleep in the living room on the recliner.  After the family left we watched the movie Silence of the Lambs.  Brilliant movie.  I loved the plot and the excitement of the movie.  The violence was pretty intense but I don't remember it standing out too much too me.  However, when the movie was over and the lights were turned out I remember laying on the recliner trying to fall asleep.  I was so scared from that movie.  I think it was the psycholocial malaties of the characters that were scary.  It was also the unfamiliar place and the unfamiliar shadows coming in from the windows and the tree branches cast along the walls inside the living room where I sat in that recliner trying to fall asleep.  Beyond remembering being afraid I don't exactly recall feeling the fear, however, I think my body does and the tension builds in my neck from my telling of this story.  This was one of several stories I recall from being around my cousin David.  He was not a good influence on me, yet there was a level of connection with him that I didn't have with Paul or Kevin.  It's interesting that I had this relationship.  I think mom had a soft spot in her heart for David because he seemed to be the troubled child of Norma's three boys.  Mom always wanted to help out the outsider, and that was certainly David.  I really don't think that made a huge impact on him.  Yet I think that he could have ended up in an even worse situation without her support.