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| Not the right movie, but the image will do-- 1959, Castle's The Tingler with Vincent Price. |
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When I took Nate to kindergarten this morning, I asked him if he wanted to put on his jacket.
Nate: When my teeth are going up and down, it means I am cold. When my teeth are not going up and down, I'm not cold.
The beginning of wisdom, or something. Scarce as hens' teeth.
Also, some hours earlier, in bed:
Me: Hrrump?
Nate climbs in.
Me: Whassamatter?
Nate: I thought there were ghostes [GHOST-ez, Nate-plural of ghost] sitting on the bed.
I burble comforting nonsense and go back to sleep.
Nate, still thinking hard, wakes me up: What are you afraid of?
Pause.
(No doubt I am semi-comatose, as befits a mother of three after a long day.)
Nate: Buffaloes?
I wake up enough to laugh.
Nate: Or moving skeletons?
Which is odd because that's exactly what I was afraid of at the age of 5, my babysitters in Baton Rouge (a childless couple, friends of my parents) having let me see a movie about that very thing... Or was it Gramercy, and I a bit younger?
We didn't have a t.v. at our house, so I suppose it was pretty potent stuff for me, all those glarey-white bones clattering around on the screen. I remember clearly the hospital setting, a skeleton in the back seat of a car coming into life behind the doctor and a pretty nurse, and skeletons pushing baby carriages over a cliff. I expect that was especially horrifying, as I wasn't so many years out of being a baby myself.
When my father was very young, he saw a buffalo running down his street in Canton, Ohio, pursued by men on horses. Later in his youth, he remembered this, and checked with his mother: it had happened; a Wild West show was then in town. He inferred that the buffalo's escape had been contrived to create publicity. Neither he nor my grandmother suffered from a fear of buffaloes. I never asked them about skeletons.
ReplyDeleteGreat story. I have been to Canton (through Canton) on my way to Yellow Springs. Saw the giant football, stayed with friends in Alliance!
DeleteAfter my parents dragged me away from Louisiana, we lived in Fort Hays, Kansas for three years. Not a whole lot to do there, so we used to visit the buffaloes at the research station. Nobody had ever seen a Southerner, so I was the spectacle for other children... No skeletons. Not even closets, as I recall.