Report from the Couch: Killer Clowns
This week I am staying at the home of my friends, Tina and Will who have a spacious apartment near Children's Hospital. They are actually attending a family function in Ilwaco (?) and so I am here by myself. It's really a lovely apartment, but I am very aware of how quiet it is. Most notably at night when I go to bed. After I've locked the doors and closed most of the windows.
I should pause here for a moment and tell you about when I was a kid. As a young child, until about age 12, I was sometimes plagued by a very active imagination which made going to bed an absolute terror for me. At one time or another I was haunted by visions and nightmares of: vampires, werewolves, demon possession, demon possession of black sedans that could leap thru 2nd stories of houses, "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein", alien invasions and Killer Bee's from South America.
Over the years I eventually learned how to dispel my fear through sometimes simple (and sometimes not so simple) feats of kid logic. For example, after a suffocating summer sleeping under blankets to protect my neck from the onslaught of vampire neck bites, I managed to reason that, now that there is snow outside and it's cold, vampire bats would freeze to death before they got to my window. Therefore I was safe. This also worked for South American Killer Bees. (Werewolves, too, except that it wasn't so much the freezing to death as they don't wear shoes and the ice and snow on the ground would not be comfortable for them. Really, summer is the prime season for death by monster.)
Still, as an adult, there are those rare occasions where it will take me a few days to get used to sleeping alone in a new apartment. Until then I can have very brief, but intense, bouts of paranoia fueled by bad dreams and being tired. Take for example this lovely, cozy apartment. It's very solidly built with wall to wall carpeting. With the screen doors shut and the windows closed you can't hear anything. And it freaks me out a little.
So today I found myself, half-awake in the wee hours of the morning, straining to hear something, anything, although I was actually afraid that I would hear something and dear god what if that happened? Because the other thing about this cozy apartment? It's really dark. It's situated such that it gets very little sunlight during the day. And the night? Forget about it. I'm pretty blind without my glasses and its really dark and really quiet and now I can't hear the crazed killer clown that just broke in and is creeping toward my room along the carpet that muffles every single noise and even though my cell phone is near I can't remember the street address!!!! I am so toast.
I was never afraid of clowns until last night. Why now? I have no idea.
On the plus side, Tina and Will return tomorrow so I just have to get through tonight and when I go back to my place next week I will bring Sally home with me because, god bless her, she's a barker and killer clowns will be no match.
I should pause here for a moment and tell you about when I was a kid. As a young child, until about age 12, I was sometimes plagued by a very active imagination which made going to bed an absolute terror for me. At one time or another I was haunted by visions and nightmares of: vampires, werewolves, demon possession, demon possession of black sedans that could leap thru 2nd stories of houses, "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein", alien invasions and Killer Bee's from South America.
Over the years I eventually learned how to dispel my fear through sometimes simple (and sometimes not so simple) feats of kid logic. For example, after a suffocating summer sleeping under blankets to protect my neck from the onslaught of vampire neck bites, I managed to reason that, now that there is snow outside and it's cold, vampire bats would freeze to death before they got to my window. Therefore I was safe. This also worked for South American Killer Bees. (Werewolves, too, except that it wasn't so much the freezing to death as they don't wear shoes and the ice and snow on the ground would not be comfortable for them. Really, summer is the prime season for death by monster.)
Still, as an adult, there are those rare occasions where it will take me a few days to get used to sleeping alone in a new apartment. Until then I can have very brief, but intense, bouts of paranoia fueled by bad dreams and being tired. Take for example this lovely, cozy apartment. It's very solidly built with wall to wall carpeting. With the screen doors shut and the windows closed you can't hear anything. And it freaks me out a little.
So today I found myself, half-awake in the wee hours of the morning, straining to hear something, anything, although I was actually afraid that I would hear something and dear god what if that happened? Because the other thing about this cozy apartment? It's really dark. It's situated such that it gets very little sunlight during the day. And the night? Forget about it. I'm pretty blind without my glasses and its really dark and really quiet and now I can't hear the crazed killer clown that just broke in and is creeping toward my room along the carpet that muffles every single noise and even though my cell phone is near I can't remember the street address!!!! I am so toast.
I was never afraid of clowns until last night. Why now? I have no idea.
On the plus side, Tina and Will return tomorrow so I just have to get through tonight and when I go back to my place next week I will bring Sally home with me because, god bless her, she's a barker and killer clowns will be no match.
posted by maryja at
8:04 PM
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