Scary Movies

So with K down for the count, and this being the month of October, and being forced to get the majority of the cleaning chores out of the way at night... I have been priviledged with the opportunity to watch an aweful lot of scary movies. Which is great, because I love scary movies. They don't really scare me... well except for two types. One is psycological thrillers like Psycho, which I still watch because they fascinate me. The other is ANY type of scary movie involving dolls or a doll. For instance, I will never watch Child's Play. Once, when I was little I saw a Twighlight zone episode involving dolls. Later on as a teenager I recall coming home from a play rehearsal late at night to catch the end of a movie where a room full of dolls came to life with their own grisly agenda. That did it in for me.

I have to admit though watching scary movies night after night after night as started to have a little effect on me. For instance, the night I watched Night of the Living Dead, I was standing upstairs in the bedroom when Kallie came around the corner of the hallway stumbling half asleep with her arms out in front of her. Catching her out of the corner of my eye made me catch my breath for a second.

The effect on me hasn't been as profound as the effect on Dandy I think though. I've been walking Dandy at night. Usually as we walk past yards with other dogs, she ignores them for the most part. But the other night one dog was incredibly persistant in its barking so I resorted to something I use to do with dogs all the time... I barked back. Dandy was just short of performing a standing 180. When she realized it was just me she pretended like nothing had happened, but now when she thinks something is scary on TV, she goes up to sleep in the bedroom.

The effect of scary movies on small children is interesting too. Sometimes at night I've had to rock Little K to sleep. I don't let her see the TV, but she can still hear it, and she doesn't know it's supposed to be scary. Her reaction to it is remarkably pure and simple. Her response to what she hears is that the people on the TV need their mommies and daddies. She actually becomes very concerned sometimes that they won't find their parents. Once I even had to change the channel and tell her that they found their parents okay, because she was so concerned.