~a column by Colleen O’Brien
I’ve had four scary events in my life. Pure fright. All of them pre-adulthood except the last one:
–The first one was jumping off a 30-foot ladder at the age of 10 and running home.
–The second was seeing the movie “Psycho” at the age of 16.
–The third was driving to the hotel after the wedding ceremony, age 21.
Margo and I are roaming around south Jefferson, idling away our 9-year-oldness between her house and mine in a complicated non-direct route. We’ve climbed every tree in the south end of town and are jaded by the lack of daring-do in our lives. We don’t even bother searching out the boys because we know they are not interested in playing ball with girls. We’re scuffling through leaves on private property that is an estate between Vine Street and Elm (Hiway 17 at the time) that covers the entire width of a city block, when I spy a ladder leaning against the three-story mansion beside the four-story chimney.
We’ve run past her a hundred times. Has the ladder always been there?
I go first, climb deftly, then slower and slower as I approach the second floor to gaze into a small, paned window. I lean forward to look into . . . . a library. Fascinated by the wall-to-wall books and an inside ladder on wheels, I feel a presence that sends a chill down my spine. Without turning my head, I shift my gaze to the right. Dr. Franklin, house owner we’ve never encountered, even once, however many times we’ve dawdled along his block-long driveway and played on his outdoor fireplace, stares calmly at me, a slight smile on his old, wrinkled face.
I freeze. For less than a second. Then I yell at Margo, “The Doc’s in town!” as I’m leaping over her to the grassy side yard 20 feet below, running toward home before my feet hit the turf. Margo and I wind up gasping for air under a boxelder tree in the grass of my own side yard.
Eventually we get water from the hose – if we go inside for a drink, Mom will make us wash our hands, sit down and have a cookie. I, for one, don’t want to encounter her at all.
The odd thing is that Margo and I don’t reconnoiter the incident ever again. Still haven’t.
For months after being spied upon by the owner of the mansion we so easily scampered up a 30-foot ladder to spy upon, the scene came to me and made me shiver all over again.
The next fright of my life happens at the movies.
It is 1960, and I am on my Sunday afternoon movie date with my boyfriend. I can drive, but he isn’t old enough yet; the prospect of my borrowing the family car and picking him up for the date is not in either of our consciences: girls do not pick up boys for movie dates in 1960. At least not in Jefferson, Iowa.
I am at my adult height of five feet seven inches. He is nowhere near that. So, we walk, he on the curb, I in the gutter, five blocks to the Iowa Theater.
The movie is “Psycho,” and we know it is supposed to be scary. It starts out boring, however, an office scene, guilty glances from the secretary to her boss, etc. We eat our popcorn, then settle down for the real reason of going to the movies with a boyfriend – my guy’s left arm around my shoulder, holding my right hand with his right hand. Thrilling.
As the movie progresses, we become still, frozen in place so to speak, having forgotten one another. There is screaming in the theater, then, finally, the scene of the main character/murderer slumped in a jail cell telling a fly that he couldn’t hurt a fly.
It is dusk when we emerge from the theater. I walk fast, then run as we leave the relative safeness of downtown to get past the park to arrive at my house. I flee inside without a kiss goodbye, not caring if my boyfriend makes it home alive or not.
“Psycho” lives within me for years. I never take showers, only baths, even at college. I don’t walk anywhere at night alone.
I had what is now known as PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – an unnamed physical and psychic reaction to pure fright.
P.S. I am over “Psycho,” although I do not watch creepy films or read books like “In Cold Blood” (true account of two killers of a farm couple in Kansas). Movies and books are now scarier than “Psycho,” and I understand that they get scarier by the year. Alfred Hitchcock and his psycho stabbing death of a young woman in a shower started something that still escalates.
So much for the meaning of “progress,” whether it’s of firearms or films or a President shaping a dystopia for us rather than pruning into perfectness a utopia, which he could have chosen to do and become a hero instead of a pain in the head, heart, buttocks.
My third fright is almost ridiculous to reveal, but it was an existential fright nonetheless, and reportable:
I am finally in the car with my beloved! Married! The endless reception is not over. But having been encouraged by the insistence of my romantic Gramma Grace (“When are you two lovebirds getting out of here?”), we escape.
The borrowed car holds our overnight bags: we’re going to a hotel 40 miles away and then returning home the next day to unwrap wedding gifts and write thank-yous (Mother of the Bride in action), then flying to California to begin life as adults in the U.S. Navy.
So…we are sitting at the four-way stop north of town, I about as close to my old friend and new husband as I can get without sitting in his lap, when I look directly at his profile, open my eyes wide, slide immediately to the passenger door and huddle.
Who is that guy? I whisper to myself.
I move my eyes around, no head action, and take in the car. Whose car is this?
I grab the door handle, more frightened than I ever was with Doc Franklin and Alfred Hitchcock. I am being abducted.
At that moment, driver husband puts us into gear, and we zoom across new Highway 30 and on toward Fort Dodge. I come to. Shake my head. My groom reaches for my hand, “How’d you get way over there?” He’s smiling at me. The darling.
I move back to where I belong in the borrowed car, eager to get to the hotel, order a hamburger with onions – I ate nothing of the finger sandwiches which I’d helped my mom prepare for my own party – and off we go.
We had what seemed like a long – but, alas, it wasn’t – life together. During all that time, I never found the right time to tell him of my 21-year-old momentary lack of recognition of the fellow I’d loved since kindergarten. End of three not too scary tales. Once an adult, I became practical, mundane, so not flibbertigibbety, losing any desire for wild adventure. I was happy, sometimes testy of course, bopping along in my Life in a Bubble. Unprepared for my fourth fright – I never prepared for this one – I learned at the age of 64 the true meaning of fright when he died.
