…I’ll be hiding under my bed.

I hate October. Halloween candy and lovely autumn foliage notwithstanding, I wish I could skip over the entire month. August…September…November…December. That would be my preferred calendar progression. What is wrong with October, you may be wondering. Well frankly, October terrifies me. It’s a month that is in love with horror movies…an affinity that I do not share. Being possessed of an overly active imagination, I have a very low tolerance for horror stories in any form. Books, movies, campfire tales, urban legends—all off limits for me. Even television ads for horror movies give me the heebie jeebies. (Honestly, I think they put the most terrifying parts of the movie in the commercial, so why bother going to see the whole film anyway??) I spend the entire month of October avoiding these trailers…which means I’m either hiding my head in a pillow and begging my husband to change the channel, or I am relegated to watching nothing but Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. So you can understand why October isn’t winning any popularity contests in the land of me.

If doing away with October is out of the question (as I’m sure it is), how about just abolishing Halloween?? **Insert your condemnation and outrage at such an idea here.** Okay. Calm down. Calm down. I know that isn’t a particularly popular idea. Fine. Fine. How about just altering Halloween slightly? Instead of looking at it as a festival of the spooky and scary, maybe it could be a celebration of the cute and funny. You know, like babies dressed up like pea pods and wiener dogs dressed up like…well, just about anything actually, because wiener dogs are inherently hilarious in their own right. Another alternative to spooky and scary might be Geeky—like a nationwide Comic-Con sort of thing. Now THAT has possibilities! Just a thought.

Before you mock me too cruelly and label me a huge chicken, just know that I wasn’t always such a coward. In years past, I loved a good Stephen King novel and a well-crafted horror flick. Over time, however, I have paid the price for these indiscretions. My brain has meticulously filed away all of the terrifying bits in exquisite detail, and it pulls out these little video clips at the most inopportune moments (i.e., when I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I have a minor phobia of mirrors in dark bathrooms. More on that later.) I finally got wise to the fact that I shouldn’t be feeding my mind’s little fear factory, so I imposed a categorical ban on all spooky horror flicks. (To clarify, I don’t have a problem with monster movies—zombies, aliens, killer sharks, etc. —or slasher movies **yawn**. It’s the creepy, supernatural stuff that messes with my head. A couple of classics that still haunt me on a regular basis are the Boogeyman in the closet and the clown from “It”. Thank you very much to Stephen King on both counts.)

As a testament to my low tolerance for scary movies and my own foolishness, last year I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to watch Paranormal Activity. I’m an idiot.

Let me repeat, I’m an idiot.

If there was one movie in the history of the universe guaranteed to completely and totally freak me out, that was the one…custom-made to scar my psyche. In a ridiculous miscalculation, I allowed myself to become fascinated by all of the hype that had surrounded the movie, and I was confident that if I watched it in broad daylight, in the most non-spooky and populous location available to me, all would be well. So, I watched it during my lunch break on two consecutive days at work, sitting at my desk amidst my coworkers. (This was probably a mistake on another level as well, considering the gasps and small shrieks I wasn’t able to stifle.) Let me reiterate, I am an idiot. Just because I watched the movie in a “safe” environment, didn’t mean my mind wasn’t going to use it for its own evil purposes when I was, say, in a dark bathroom or…even worse…in a dark bathroom in a dark basement! That movie has an extremely high creepiness factor. To this day, I try not to think about it too much. I was a basket case.

If that wasn’t enough, however, my viewing of this particular little terror fest coincided with the release of one of the sequels, so I was subjected to repeated showings of the television commercial for said sequel. If the original was taylor-made to send me diving under my blankets, the creators must have talked to my family before making the sequel. At this point, I will explain my bathroom mirror phobia. I would bet that some of you out there will relate to this.

When I was a little girl, my older sister would occasionally have sleepovers, and her friends took great delight in trying to scare the annoying little tag-a-long…namely, me. As has occurred in countless slumber-parties over countless years, the group of nervously tittering girls…with me in tow…would lock themselves in a dark bathroom and perform the “Bloody Mary” routine in order to conjure the specter in the mirror. Of course it never worked, but it was still enough to stick with me and plant the phobic seed in my mind. Ever since then, I’ve not been a big fan of bathroom mirrors, especially in the dark. Fast-forward to last year, when the commercial for the Paranormal Activity sequel featured two young girls in a pitch black bathroom trying to conjure Bloody Mary. One little girl turns on a flashlight and shrieks, scaring the other one, who storms out of the bathroom angrily. As the door opens, the light from outside illuminates the terrifying figure of Bloody Mary in the bathroom. **Excuse me while I hyperventilate briefly. Breathe. Breathe.** WHY would you make such a commercial and put it on television where I could ever possibly accidentally see it? Why?? Those film-makers are going to pay for my therapy bills. It’s not right. Simply not right! To this day I won’t look at the bathroom mirror until I’ve turned on the light. I’ll close my eyes if I have to, but no way am I looking. If the power ever goes out during the night and I have to pee, forget about it. I’m just going to wet the bed. I hope my husband will understand.

So, you see, I have a real, legitimate gripe with October. Television is a mine-field during the whole month. I might just have to buy the complete Gilligan’s Island collection on DVD and stick to that for my television entertainment. Of course, the episode when the island is haunted by the ghost creeps me out a little bit too, so maybe not. **sigh** I guess I’ll just hide under the bed some more. Come and get me in time for Thanksgiving.

**Song and video in my head right now: Gangnam Style. Honestly, how can you NOT smile during the elevator part?**