Saturday, February 12, 2011

A World Full of Dead People










There were two things that scared me growing up:


The Poseidon Adventure and nuclear war.


I would go to bed after watching the former, and think about Shelley Winters dying. And how everybody died in that movie. But I would think about Shelley Winters and hate that she died. She shouldn’t have died, but she always dies in her movies.


I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I’d lie there and think about her dying, and how dying was something that happened, something real, and not just in the movies. I didn’t know anybody who had died, yet, so the whole concept was still rather new to me.


This happened for weeks after. I begged to sleep with mom and dad, thinking that they would make the dying go away.


Growing up in the 80’s, I was also well aware of nuclear war, or at least the possibility of it. It was first brought to my attention with the film War Games which I’m still unable to watch. The idea that so much dying could be considered a game made me shake in my booted jammies.


I would imagine the day it happened, playing in the yard, a summer day. A shock and a shake and mom calling out and then disappearing like grandpa’s flash camera flash.





For years I hated flash cameras. The thing that meant an instant, and then long gone.