I feel I really MUST respond. All of the foregoing narrative is factual EXCEPT that I am positive I did not administer a spanking for being awakened–even repeatedly–by my frightened son. I do remember, after having tried everything else, telling him that the things he was scared of while trying to sleep were not really there but that if he could not bring himself to believe that, he would just have to be brave. Since I, myself, lost many, many night’s sleep due to a monster picture entitled “It Came From Beneath the Sea” my parents dragged me to as a child (about a giant octopus that terrorizes San Francisco–where I lived at the time) I fully sympathized with his plight. I probably was not happy about having to get up but a spanking? No way. Must have finally gotten to sleep and dreamed it…
You’re right, and I’m very sorry. I fixed the text. For the latecomers (and for the sake of completeness), here is the original (false) paragraph:
To my parents credit they were pretty patient with me. As a six or seven year old with nightmares, sleep was not high on my priority list and they tried their best to console me and be understanding when possible. I recall that it finally got out of hand, keeping my father up or waking him up probably for the 20th time in the same night and I recall him clearly warning me that it was all fine and I was safe and nothing was going to happen to me… unless I woke him up again in which case he’d give me something to be frightened of. I didn’t take him seriously but he was true to his word and I don’t recall relying on them for comfort much after the ensuing spanking. At the very least I don’t think I went out of my way to wake them up each time I had a bad dream.
But upon reflection I realize that my dad is 100% correct and that while I certainly deserved a whipping at the time, he instead chose the high road and just told me to suck it up. Which from his persepctive probably more or less worked although I do recall being very upset about it (moreso probably than if I had just been spanked) which is probably why my adult brain has a hard time comprehending how I could have been that agitated by his perfectly rational actions without them involving a paddled behind.
Which is something strange in itself, because I know I received enough spankings as a kid to get the picture very clearly when I did something really wrong but other than this one mis-remembered instance, I can’t recall any other specifics from any other infractions. Which means that since this one was not in fact a spanking at all, I don’t remember any percussive punishments I ever received.
I guess that either means my parents were way too easy on me or I never did anything worthy of a really epic spanking. I’m going to guess it was the former.
This also leads to an uncomfortable line of thought in which I’m now not sure how much of my memories from early childhood are actual and how much are warped by the misperception of recollection.
Brandie:
July 27th, 2006 at 9:53 am
As a young child I was told, probably by my Uncle, that the Boogieman ran around my frequently visited cousins’ house. The house was creepy as it was: cluttered, dirty, run down, and spiderwebs seemed to be everywhere. I have this permanent vision in my head of the boogieman: tall, greenish brown, body texture comparable to a slimy rock covered in boogers. In my vision he just runs laps around the house as if holding visitors inside captive. If we were there after dark I would pretend to fall asleep so someone would have to carry me to the car. There was no way I would voluntarily walk myself out that door and possibly be left alone to come face to face with the Boogieman. To this day I hate being at that house after dark. I know it’s silly. I know there is not boogieman but being there after dark still gives me an uneasy feeling.
@Brandie:
For some reason the Boogieman was never an issue for me. Sure, I heard of him, but he was always so nebulous (yours is the first real unpleasant description of him I’ve heard) that he meant nothing. I had an active imagination but I needed something to go on, you know?
That said, I probably could have substituted my fear of generic “monsters” for the Boogieman except for two things: One is that even as a kid I found the name “Boogieman” to be much more humorous than frightening. The other is that there was some show (considering this morning’s memory issues, I’m hesitant to wager even a guess as to what it was) that depicted the Boogieman as a big flurry blue muppet of some kind. Once that non-threatening image was burned into my association with the Boogieman it was hard to work up a cold sweat over something no more frightening than Bert and Ernie.
I’m not sure what this says about the Hamilton boys, but i know i was as much of a scared kid as you were, if not more. I can think of several instances:
1. I seem to remember being frightened to the point of crying and not finishing the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup i was eating by the same scene in V. For whatever reason it was a long time before the letter “V” was not associated with fear for me.
2. I had a penchant for being scared by things based on their reputation of being scary, or even if they were just supposed to be scary. Case in point is the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but a more vivid example was Stephen King’s IT, which i have not ever seen but was still frightened into sleeplessness for more nights than i can count by. I even remember seeing a commercial for ITT Technical Institute and having it trigger unpleasant memories (which had all been created in my head, since i had seen little more than brief snippets of a trailer for the TV movie) just because it contained the letters “IT”. Something about me and letters, i guess.
3. This may be revealing more about myself than many would be willing to do, but several years ago, when i was very much an adult and no longer a child, I went with Sara and her parents and saw The Ring, and proceeded to undergo about a week of sleepless nights. I guess my mind tends to take movies more seriously than is wise, which i guess is why i like movies that create a compelling world (for instance, The Fifth Element or the Harry Potter films) because i can easily find myself identifying with the goings-on. However, this also makes movies like The Ring that much more disturbing for me, since i get caught up in the world that has malevolent beings randomly scaring people until they die simply because they are evil. Not learning much from this experience, i proceeded, a few years later, to watch the DVD of The Grudge with Sara and while it didn’t affect me quite as badly, it still scared the crap out of me.
I know that i am not like you in your attempts to expose yourself to scary things in an effort to overcome them. I have no problem admitting that scary movies scare me, and so i’ll just keep my distance, thank you very much.
@scott:
I recall you being very, very frightened of the movie posters in video stores for horror flicks like Nightmare on Elm Street, to the extent of staying in the car when we went to rent videos out of fear that you might catch a glimpse of one. Truth be told, a bit earlier than you I found myself frightened by the box art for the movies in the horror section of the video stores. But for whatever reason I couldn’t bring myself to look away and became endlessly fascinated by their macabre depictions of sinister villains and horrific creatures. That may have been the first indication I can recall that as much as fear gripped me, I was nevertheless endlessly fascinated by it.
In fact one thing I meant to mention but neglected to is that one of the things that also helped me determine that I was going to face the fear of the nameless, unknown malevolence I lumped together in my mind as “monsters” was seeing you suffer from your own bouts of nightmares.
For awhile there you slept in my room out of fear which I assume was for some sort of comfort and I figured it wouldn’t do you much good if I was just as terrified as you were. Of course at the time it was fabricated in my mind a lot less altruistically: I just wanted to make sure I was braver than you, being the bigger brother and all.
My most recent round of movie-induced “fear” was more of a lingering disgust generated from a scene in Ghost Ship near the beginning where dozens of people die simultaneously and then is repeated several times throughout the rest of the film. The movie itself was ho-hum but that one scene (while spectacularly done from a special effects/make-up standpoint) is so arbitrary and twisted that it really haunted me for some time. Perhaps unsurprisingly it wasn’t until I forced myself to think about it in detail and eventually caught a “making of” featurette about that particular stunt that it began to lose some of its bite.
While we’re on the subject of scary media stuff, there was a too-short-lived series back in the pre-color TV days that was really creepy. It was called “Thriller” and was hosted Rod-Serling-style by Boris Karloff. Where “Twilight Zone” could be weird and occasionally eerie, it was rarely grab-the-pillow-to-hide-your-eyes scary. “Thriller” was just that. Now, it could be the age I was or that time and memory have exaggerated its quality but I remember it as flat-out scary. Yet, much as I hated scary movies, I watched it often. It had an episode about a woman whose car stalls out in the country on a stormy night and has to spend the night in a spooky house with creepy people who end up being even creepier than she could have imagined–that sort of thing. If anyone ever finds a DVD collection of episodes, have a look (and let me know where you found them).
Don (a.k.a. Dad):
July 26th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
I feel I really MUST respond. All of the foregoing narrative is factual EXCEPT that I am positive I did not administer a spanking for being awakened–even repeatedly–by my frightened son. I do remember, after having tried everything else, telling him that the things he was scared of while trying to sleep were not really there but that if he could not bring himself to believe that, he would just have to be brave. Since I, myself, lost many, many night’s sleep due to a monster picture entitled “It Came From Beneath the Sea” my parents dragged me to as a child (about a giant octopus that terrorizes San Francisco–where I lived at the time) I fully sympathized with his plight. I probably was not happy about having to get up but a spanking? No way. Must have finally gotten to sleep and dreamed it…
ironsoap:
July 27th, 2006 at 9:08 am
You’re right, and I’m very sorry. I fixed the text. For the latecomers (and for the sake of completeness), here is the original (false) paragraph:
But upon reflection I realize that my dad is 100% correct and that while I certainly deserved a whipping at the time, he instead chose the high road and just told me to suck it up. Which from his persepctive probably more or less worked although I do recall being very upset about it (moreso probably than if I had just been spanked) which is probably why my adult brain has a hard time comprehending how I could have been that agitated by his perfectly rational actions without them involving a paddled behind.
Which is something strange in itself, because I know I received enough spankings as a kid to get the picture very clearly when I did something really wrong but other than this one mis-remembered instance, I can’t recall any other specifics from any other infractions. Which means that since this one was not in fact a spanking at all, I don’t remember any percussive punishments I ever received.
I guess that either means my parents were way too easy on me or I never did anything worthy of a really epic spanking. I’m going to guess it was the former.
This also leads to an uncomfortable line of thought in which I’m now not sure how much of my memories from early childhood are actual and how much are warped by the misperception of recollection.
Brandie:
July 27th, 2006 at 9:53 am
As a young child I was told, probably by my Uncle, that the Boogieman ran around my frequently visited cousins’ house. The house was creepy as it was: cluttered, dirty, run down, and spiderwebs seemed to be everywhere. I have this permanent vision in my head of the boogieman: tall, greenish brown, body texture comparable to a slimy rock covered in boogers. In my vision he just runs laps around the house as if holding visitors inside captive. If we were there after dark I would pretend to fall asleep so someone would have to carry me to the car. There was no way I would voluntarily walk myself out that door and possibly be left alone to come face to face with the Boogieman. To this day I hate being at that house after dark. I know it’s silly. I know there is not boogieman but being there after dark still gives me an uneasy feeling.
ironsoap:
July 27th, 2006 at 10:01 am
@Brandie:
For some reason the Boogieman was never an issue for me. Sure, I heard of him, but he was always so nebulous (yours is the first real unpleasant description of him I’ve heard) that he meant nothing. I had an active imagination but I needed something to go on, you know?
That said, I probably could have substituted my fear of generic “monsters” for the Boogieman except for two things: One is that even as a kid I found the name “Boogieman” to be much more humorous than frightening. The other is that there was some show (considering this morning’s memory issues, I’m hesitant to wager even a guess as to what it was) that depicted the Boogieman as a big flurry blue muppet of some kind. Once that non-threatening image was burned into my association with the Boogieman it was hard to work up a cold sweat over something no more frightening than Bert and Ernie.
scott:
July 27th, 2006 at 11:32 am
I’m not sure what this says about the Hamilton boys, but i know i was as much of a scared kid as you were, if not more. I can think of several instances:
1. I seem to remember being frightened to the point of crying and not finishing the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup i was eating by the same scene in V. For whatever reason it was a long time before the letter “V” was not associated with fear for me.
2. I had a penchant for being scared by things based on their reputation of being scary, or even if they were just supposed to be scary. Case in point is the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but a more vivid example was Stephen King’s IT, which i have not ever seen but was still frightened into sleeplessness for more nights than i can count by. I even remember seeing a commercial for ITT Technical Institute and having it trigger unpleasant memories (which had all been created in my head, since i had seen little more than brief snippets of a trailer for the TV movie) just because it contained the letters “IT”. Something about me and letters, i guess.
3. This may be revealing more about myself than many would be willing to do, but several years ago, when i was very much an adult and no longer a child, I went with Sara and her parents and saw The Ring, and proceeded to undergo about a week of sleepless nights. I guess my mind tends to take movies more seriously than is wise, which i guess is why i like movies that create a compelling world (for instance, The Fifth Element or the Harry Potter films) because i can easily find myself identifying with the goings-on. However, this also makes movies like The Ring that much more disturbing for me, since i get caught up in the world that has malevolent beings randomly scaring people until they die simply because they are evil. Not learning much from this experience, i proceeded, a few years later, to watch the DVD of The Grudge with Sara and while it didn’t affect me quite as badly, it still scared the crap out of me.
I know that i am not like you in your attempts to expose yourself to scary things in an effort to overcome them. I have no problem admitting that scary movies scare me, and so i’ll just keep my distance, thank you very much.
ironsoap:
July 27th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
@scott:
I recall you being very, very frightened of the movie posters in video stores for horror flicks like Nightmare on Elm Street, to the extent of staying in the car when we went to rent videos out of fear that you might catch a glimpse of one. Truth be told, a bit earlier than you I found myself frightened by the box art for the movies in the horror section of the video stores. But for whatever reason I couldn’t bring myself to look away and became endlessly fascinated by their macabre depictions of sinister villains and horrific creatures. That may have been the first indication I can recall that as much as fear gripped me, I was nevertheless endlessly fascinated by it.
In fact one thing I meant to mention but neglected to is that one of the things that also helped me determine that I was going to face the fear of the nameless, unknown malevolence I lumped together in my mind as “monsters” was seeing you suffer from your own bouts of nightmares.
For awhile there you slept in my room out of fear which I assume was for some sort of comfort and I figured it wouldn’t do you much good if I was just as terrified as you were. Of course at the time it was fabricated in my mind a lot less altruistically: I just wanted to make sure I was braver than you, being the bigger brother and all.
My most recent round of movie-induced “fear” was more of a lingering disgust generated from a scene in Ghost Ship near the beginning where dozens of people die simultaneously and then is repeated several times throughout the rest of the film. The movie itself was ho-hum but that one scene (while spectacularly done from a special effects/make-up standpoint) is so arbitrary and twisted that it really haunted me for some time. Perhaps unsurprisingly it wasn’t until I forced myself to think about it in detail and eventually caught a “making of” featurette about that particular stunt that it began to lose some of its bite.
Don (a.k.a. Dad):
July 29th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
While we’re on the subject of scary media stuff, there was a too-short-lived series back in the pre-color TV days that was really creepy. It was called “Thriller” and was hosted Rod-Serling-style by Boris Karloff. Where “Twilight Zone” could be weird and occasionally eerie, it was rarely grab-the-pillow-to-hide-your-eyes scary. “Thriller” was just that. Now, it could be the age I was or that time and memory have exaggerated its quality but I remember it as flat-out scary. Yet, much as I hated scary movies, I watched it often. It had an episode about a woman whose car stalls out in the country on a stormy night and has to spend the night in a spooky house with creepy people who end up being even creepier than she could have imagined–that sort of thing. If anyone ever finds a DVD collection of episodes, have a look (and let me know where you found them).