Happy Birthday and Nightmare Fuel
If my grandmother were still alive, today would be her 100th birthday (or possibly her 101st; she was 95 when she died, but she insisted that she was 96, so who can say for sure).
When I was a boy, I would spend most of my summers with my grandparents, and it was very much that idyllic period that you see portrayed in films: no Internet, no cell phones, no helicoptering caregivers. We kids would head out in the morning after our bowls of sugary cereal and vanish into the world until dusk, and nobody worried about us. We had no idea how good we had it back then.
The only drawback to where they lived on the outskirts of town was that everything in town (toy shops, bookstores, movie theaters) was too far to get to unless someone drove you. I was a kid who loved movies, and so my grandmother would frequently take me into town for the first showing of something I wanted to see, and I would just stay all day and watch the movie multiple times, or theater hop and see what else was playing (going from The Beastmaster to The World According to Garp, for example; not always appropriate for my age, but I was never really always appropriate for my age, either).
I’m telling you that so I can tell you this: one summer evening my grandmother decided she wanted to take me, my younger sister, and our even younger cousin to see this new movie everyone was talking about: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I, of course, being a hip young dude of a certain age, had zero interest in going to see a movie with both my sister and my cousin, and also didn’t want to see a kid’s movie with my grandmother. I was used to going to the movies by myself, and I didn’t need both a chaperone and to be a babysitter. A movie was a movie though, so I grudgingly went along.
We arrived a little late at the theater, but still grabbed popcorn and sodas, and made our way to find seats. The trailers had already run and the film had begun, but we had only missed the opening credits. The theater wasn’t crowded (other than waiting in line for Star Wars when it first came out in theaters in 1977, I don’t recall ever having to wait to get into a film as a kid), and we quickly found seats and settled in.
As I said, I love movies, so even though I wasn’t that interested in E.T., I was certainly going to try to enjoy myself. As the film rolled, I watched this middle class family in their subdivision home leading a normal suburban life, and I ate my popcorn and waited for the alien to show up. I waited while the daughter talked to a TV set that was tuned to static. I watched as an earthquake shook the house. I watched when furniture rearranged itself in the kitchen. I watched when a tree crashed through a bedroom window and a clown doll tried to strangle a little boy.
This is when I realized that my grandmother had accidentally taken me and my young sister and cousin not to a screening of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but to the classic horror film, Poltergeist.
I was absolutely entranced. The rest of my family were absolutely terrified. My sister was six years old, my cousin was five. I’m pretty sure they were both scarred for life from that experience. I was beyond thrilled.
I remember as we were leaving the theater after the film ended, my sister was pale and my cousin was crying.
“I don’t know why everybody said that was a good movie for kids,” my grandmother said. “We should have just stayed home and watched Hee-Haw.”
I would have seen Poltergeist on my own anyway, because nobody policed my movie watching, but I’m so glad my grandmother made a mistake and took us all to the wrong film that night. I tell this story often, and telling it on her 100th (or 101st) birthday just feels really appropriate.
I was lucky to have her and I miss her every day.
Happy birthday, Grandma.
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