DON'T IGNORE THE SOUNDTRACK
When I saw Dances with Wolves my little sister was watching too. At the part where he first sees the wolf I thought (out loud) the guy's all alone, that wolf is dangerous, there could be more of them, maybe he's even the leader of a pack, they'll attack him in his sleep...shoot the darn thing already!...do you wanna be eaten?...just shoot it!...why doesn't he shoot it? My sister turns to me with a pleading look of sympathy for the wolf, and says, "Because there's soft music playing."
'G' IS FOR GIRLS DON'T ***
There's a really stupid movie called 102 Dalmations, and years ago my family rented it. Cruella DeVil has gone through some kind of therapy in prison, and now she loves dogs and is being let out on parole. The leading lady is her parole officer, and has some dalmations. Well, unbeknownst to Pavlov-or whoever orchestrated her rehabilitation-this spell of classical conditioning can be broken by really loud bell ringing. Cruella is exposed to such cacaphony, and reverts to her old self. Meanwhile, accross town is a guy who owns an animal shelter, and is struggling to keep afloat. Actually maybe it's just a dog shelter, he only has dogs...and a parrot that THINKS it's a dog - but ANYWAY, there is a scene where the guy eats dog food to entertain the 'dogs.' This guy is the leading man. To make a long story short, the leading man and lady go out to dinner in a slightly cute scene where the dogs stay at home watching the date scene from Lady and the Tramp and shots of the the guy and girl's almost identical evening are interspliced. So now to the real joke - my little brother (pretty young at the time...10 I think?) came up to me and just asked out of the blue, "Jennifer, I don't get it. That guy is practically living on dog food, so where does he get the money to take the girl out to a nice spaghetti retaurant?" I was thinking, it's a stupid Disney sequel movie, you're not supposed to analyze it like this - but tried to think of something to pacify his youthful inquisitiveness. Finally I said, "Maybe the girl paid." His expression of perplexity quickly changed to one of horror. Sounding guilty for even hearing me say this, he whispered a grave admonition, "Jennifer, the girl would not pay in a G movie."
There's a really stupid movie called 102 Dalmations, and years ago my family rented it. Cruella DeVil has gone through some kind of therapy in prison, and now she loves dogs and is being let out on parole. The leading lady is her parole officer, and has some dalmations. Well, unbeknownst to Pavlov-or whoever orchestrated her rehabilitation-this spell of classical conditioning can be broken by really loud bell ringing. Cruella is exposed to such cacaphony, and reverts to her old self. Meanwhile, accross town is a guy who owns an animal shelter, and is struggling to keep afloat. Actually maybe it's just a dog shelter, he only has dogs...and a parrot that THINKS it's a dog - but ANYWAY, there is a scene where the guy eats dog food to entertain the 'dogs.' This guy is the leading man. To make a long story short, the leading man and lady go out to dinner in a slightly cute scene where the dogs stay at home watching the date scene from Lady and the Tramp and shots of the the guy and girl's almost identical evening are interspliced. So now to the real joke - my little brother (pretty young at the time...10 I think?) came up to me and just asked out of the blue, "Jennifer, I don't get it. That guy is practically living on dog food, so where does he get the money to take the girl out to a nice spaghetti retaurant?" I was thinking, it's a stupid Disney sequel movie, you're not supposed to analyze it like this - but tried to think of something to pacify his youthful inquisitiveness. Finally I said, "Maybe the girl paid." His expression of perplexity quickly changed to one of horror. Sounding guilty for even hearing me say this, he whispered a grave admonition, "Jennifer, the girl would not pay in a G movie."
BRAIN FREEZE
My sister was trying to explain a haircut to me, and was having trouble putting it into words. Finally she thought of a way to make me understand, brightened, and said, "Oh! You know - like the girl in Josie and the Pussycats!!! The lead singer, what was her name?...um...um...um...it's on the tip of my tongue, I'll think of it...oh yeah! JOSIE!!!!! Yeah, that was it."
My sister was trying to explain a haircut to me, and was having trouble putting it into words. Finally she thought of a way to make me understand, brightened, and said, "Oh! You know - like the girl in Josie and the Pussycats!!! The lead singer, what was her name?...um...um...um...it's on the tip of my tongue, I'll think of it...oh yeah! JOSIE!!!!! Yeah, that was it."
DRIVING RELATED PARANOIA
I constantly get teased for stuff related to driving. I was one of those atypical teenagers who didn't want to drive. My older brother was like that too, but because he didn't want to be saddled with chauffering siblings. I was just plain scared - not exactly of dying or being maimed, but more of being pulled over, of causing a wreck, forgetting to get gas and feeling stupid for being on the side of the road, or just generally getting into trouble unintentionally. I was terrified of the responsibility. Finally, when I started taking concurrent courses at Oral Roberts (all the way across town from where we lived), my mom insisted that I get my driver's license. I did fine on the written exam. I only missed one question - something about the maximum sentence for drug usage - like that has anything to do with driving...But I was so nervous during the driving exam that I made too many mistakes. The second time through, the officer was a nice old grandfatherly type, very reassuring, and I passed.
I constantly get teased for stuff related to driving. I was one of those atypical teenagers who didn't want to drive. My older brother was like that too, but because he didn't want to be saddled with chauffering siblings. I was just plain scared - not exactly of dying or being maimed, but more of being pulled over, of causing a wreck, forgetting to get gas and feeling stupid for being on the side of the road, or just generally getting into trouble unintentionally. I was terrified of the responsibility. Finally, when I started taking concurrent courses at Oral Roberts (all the way across town from where we lived), my mom insisted that I get my driver's license. I did fine on the written exam. I only missed one question - something about the maximum sentence for drug usage - like that has anything to do with driving...But I was so nervous during the driving exam that I made too many mistakes. The second time through, the officer was a nice old grandfatherly type, very reassuring, and I passed.
Because I don't driving standard, my parents have always thought I should learn, and every now and again undertake to teach me - but whatever I learn I quickly forget, and I'm not sure that I forget on accident. Anyway, once my mom and younger siblings and I were taking a long trip to visit my grandparents. We were at a gas station out in rural Oklahoma, and my mom decided this would be a good time for us to switch so that I could practice. Of course I didn't want to, but an arguer I'm not, so I did my best to get the right movement ratio going between gas and clutch. I failed miserably. The entire car had an epileptic episode then died. Some man filling his tank was watching, and I guess he was Catholic 'cuz he crossed himself. Everybody started laughing. I wished I had had the epileptic seizure instead. Actually - that'd be awesome. People like that get their driver's licenses revoked!
My first (and so far only) wreck occurred on Halloween night of 2000. It was after dark, there was alot of traffic due to Halloween, and I was on a highway undergoing construction. Suddenly a traffic jam sprung up in front of me. I hit the brakes and I think they locked. If I'd had an instinct to pump them or go for the emergency brake maybe I could've stopped in time. I think I tried to steer towards the shoulder, but we were almost at bridge and there was a bit of an embankment, so I don't think I really went that direction - or maybe my steering locked too. I don't know. Maybe if I'd been paying better attention I could've stopped in time. I don't know. The point is I didn't, and slammed into the van full of kids in front of me. The driver got out and there was blood streaming down his face. I almost had a heart-attack. After a few moments I realized that the blood was his costume. If you have any imagination then surely you understand that my relief can't be verbalized. Fortunately, my braking had accomplished something, and the impact was actually pretty mild and nobody got hurt. My car didn't even show any damage - though the van's bumper was dented - but that might've been there before. I remember thinking that their bumper looked higher than the nose of my car - and a van vs. a Honda Civic? Mine should've shown something.
When I moved out to Oklahoma State, even though I was < 100 miles from home and my grandparents lived in Stillwater, I think my parents worried about me. My older brother had gone to Oral Roberts and so this was really the farthest away that any child had moved from them for a significant amount of time. Every few weeks I would get a story from them like: a girl at a gas station went into pay, it was broad daylight, when she came back out a man told her not to get into her car 'cuz he thought he saw someone get in. They called the police. Sure enough, there was a guy in there who was supposed to rape and kill a girl to enter his gang. Another rumored gang membership activitiy was that a prospective member drives around at night with his lights off, the first one to flick their lights at him he is supposed to shoot. Also, on the weekends I often watched crime documentaries, because I really like mysteries, detective stories, and stuff like that. But, it probably heightened my sense of fear of assault. Then too, living on campus there was often news of some girl getting raped at a frat party, or about video cameras in the showers, and all kinds of stuff like that. Once my parents forwarded an e-mail to me about some special forces guy who gave presentations to womens groups on how to avoid victimization. For instance:
You should yell "fire" instead of "help," 'cuz you're more likely to get help.If you're not too close to somebody and they pull a gun on you, run. Even trained police officers have a very low accuracy rate with moving targets, and the hits are hardly ever in vital spots.If someone is chasing you, the best thing to do is get under a car and hold onto whatever you can, it's almost impossible to get somebody out from underneath a car (growing up with cats I know this is true).Short of learning martial arts, the best thing to know about fighting is to go for the eyes.When parking, park so that you won't have to back out, should you need to get out in a hurry you then can.Always lock your car, and bend the front seat forward because the best place to hide in a car is in the back seat. If the seat is pushed back you'll know someone has been in there.Et cetra I was pretty faithful about following the car related suggestions. When I moved back home, my sister and I started taking some sewing lessons together. They were in the evenings and so whenever we would go out to the car it would be dark and of course I had locked the doors and put the seat forward. Coming back I would always creep up to the window rather stealthily and look inside to make sure the seat was positioned where it should be and no one was inside, then announce something like, "Ok. No robbers." She gave me a really hard time about all this, and would never cooperate by locking her own door either. One night I had just finished declaring the coast clear, and we were just getting into the car when my sister suddenly shouted, "Jennifer! There's a bloody knife on the dashboard!" I screamed and practically fell out of the car onto the pavement before I realized she was kidding. She of course enjoyed quite a laugh at my expense. The sad thing is that she repeated this every week or so, and it still had the same effect. One night, in a more convincing voice than ever, she said, "Jennifer! There's a dirty sock on the dashboard!" I jumped out of my skin and she's never gonna let me forget it. But I got her back *evil grin*
When we moved to Colorado, we took two cars. I was following my parents, and it was just me and my sister in my car, listening to the radio. My parents weren't always good at remembering that I was following, and would often speed a bit, or make a quick lane shift and lose me. There's more coming on this later, but I'm also a terrible navigator, so getting lost in a foreign state was always weighing in the back of my mind. Most of the highway driving I'd done in Oklahoma was with speed limits of 65. The limit here was 75, I'd been driving for several hours already, curvy terrain was new to me, it was dark and the oncoming headlights were really starting to irritate, and there was a thunderstorm in progress. Needless to say I was terrified. My sister is often with me when I drive, and she can tell you that incidents that provoke road rage in most people simply make me start chanting "I hate driving. I hate driving. I hate..." That happens if I simply get cut off. This night I was freaking out. I was probably hyperventilating at that point. Suddenly a commercial came on and said, "Do you have anxiety about travel?" We both cracked up. The lady in the commercial then went on to ask other more specific questions, and my answer to about 3/4 of them was "yes." It was the perfect tension breaker!
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