Michael Jackson is to blame

He's to blame folks. here is the man...er...whatever. i have been forever scarred by this man. and for what he did to me, i can never forgive.

when i was 5 years old, my mom would leave me at the day care center while she was at work. i don't remember very much about this day care center except that it was a group of brown buildings and it was surrounded by pine trees. and there is a "school" smell that i will always associate with that day care center, but i do remember the day that my world came crashing down around me.

my pre-school teacher wanted to have a fun halloween party. i remember that there were pumpkin and bat decorations hanging from the ceiling. and the teachers rolled the t.v. cart over and put in the michael jackson video, Thriller. we were all grouped around t.v. to watch. the next thing that i remember is hiding under a table with my eyes and ears covered, crying, and my mom pulling me out from hiding to take me home. apparently the teachers never noticed that i had run, terrified, from the room and hid in a classroom in a different building. needless to say... my mother, being the caring and saintly woman that she is, switched my day care center and i never had to go back. (incedently, that day care was shut down by child protective services... where my mom works. don't mess with my mom-- she'll put the hurtin' on ya!)

mama says that i was a pretty normal kid up until that point. (despite the fact that i felt the unquenchable desire to wear strange things on my head as hats. bowls... pots... boxs... baskets... the cat.) it was this michael jackson moment that changed me for the worse. after that point i was scared of the dark, monsters and dead people. not long after the day care incident, she was watching mtv and the triller video came on. i remember having a full blown freak-out until my mom changed the channle. soon we moved to Beaumont, Tx and i was enrolled in a new day care. it had the best playground in the world. this is when people just let childern run free on a playground and safety wasn't considered too often. good times. good times. they also took field trips all the time one of which was the weekly trip to the rainbow roller rink. this rink had blacklight painting of the solar system on the back wall and a disco ball. they also had really sticky bathroom floors and orange carpet. we would skate for what felt like hours and there was always a music video break where they would lower the projection screen and show the music video for a popular song. one day they made the horriffic mistake of showing... you guessed it, Thriller. i high tailed it to the back stall of the bathroom and tried to hid behind the toilet. the teacher finally found me but i wouldn't budge untill the video was over. they must have spoken to my mom about it because they let me hide from michael jackson from then on.

fast forward to today. i am 29 years old and i have yet to watch that damn video. i have trouble even looking at pics from the video. i also am terrified of zombies, the monsters under my bed, in my closet or generally lurking about to get me, i can't watch any scary movies and usually need an escort if i go anywhere at night. and you can forget about me taking a shower at night when i am home alone. when i was in college, they all got a big kick out of freaking me out. it was bad enough that it is embarressing to be such a wussy but there were times that i was so siezed by fear that i felt like my heart was going to explode. the worst was my freshman year. we went to the on campus haunted house, which i thought would be fine as i knew most of the students running it. in the first room, i freaked out, hypervenalated, kicked some guy in the balls and had to be carried out. my RA happened to be there and then proceded to excecisize the deamons out of me. she wasn't helping the situation at all. after i calmed down, my freinds and i headed to the theatre to watch a movie on the jumbo screen. and of course, the popular film was scream. damn that scream and it's sequels. needless to say... i didn't sleep well that year. i did everything i knew to do to conquer my fears, but i was just making it worse.

now we head into the halloween season. i love halloween. dressing up and not looking like a lunitic for going out in public is the best. the food, the crisp fall air. i love this time of year. but for me it is a double edge sword. t.v. starts showing more scary movies. and i start walking on egg shells. i still feel the panic rising in me like boiling water just walking into the halloween section at wal-mart. i start taking more baths and less showers because i'm too jumpy and i have an even harder time getting to sleep than normal. this year though, i have my zombie survival guide so i think i will be ready for halloween. all the same, i think that i would rather trick-or-treat at mickey mouse's not so scary halloween party- if it's all the same to you