Home Alone

I am such a wuss.

I absolutely, positively hate going to bed when Jason's not home. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I'm afraid of the dark, but...ok, I'm afraid of the dark.

I blame it on my mom and sister. They raised me on a steady diet of horror movies long before I was old enough to really understand that what I was seeing was fake. With my only sister 11 years older than me, and in a time before video recorders, DVR boxes, and parental controls, if my adult housemates wanted to watch a scary movie in my single-TV house, I was right there with them. I loved these movies, so there was no sending me to bed. And since Sis was 17 back when I was still 6, she could take me along with her to see R-rated scary movies right there in the 10-foot-reality of the movie theater. We saw Halloween 2, An American Werewolf in London, Aliens, and John Carpenter's The Thing together in the theater before I was even 10 years old. And at home, we had girls-nights-in watching Vincent Price flicks, assorted Friday the 13th sequels, and all the 1980s slasher movies where only the "smart" girl survives the slaughter. Was this healthy viewing for an observant little girl with a lively imagination? Heck no. Was it fun as hell for said little girl? Yes! Until bedtime.

I could not sleep alone in a dark bedroom as a kid. If night-lights didn't cut it, and I was still seeing Freddy or Jason in the shadows, I escaped to my mom's room. I have outgrown the adolescent heeby-jeebies a little, and mostly I need a dark, quiet room to fall asleep. But there are still times that I wake at 3am, and imagine the Mothman outside the window or Emily Rose's demons lurking behind the door, and in those times, I need a body to snuggle close to (even though sometimes my half-asleep and terrified brain imagines that the 6-foot-4 form I share a bed with is a monster, too, but those are rare occasions.)

Now that I'm a mom, I find that I am protective of the little creature in the next room and when Jason is working overnight on a software release or out with the boys, I suck up the fear and turn out most of the lights and know that, should a real threat occur in the middle of the night, it's up to me to be smart and quick. That's pretty enpowering. There are still times, like last night, when I have to fight the urge to light every lamp, take No-Doz, and take every creak and car-door-slam as a signal to dial 9-1-1.

Jason went to the Bengals game last night, and I knew if I had any chance of functioning at work today that I had to crash well before he was able to come home. It was OK at first; I had had a rough day taking care of a sick kid, and I was tired. I drifted off easily, but a strange sound from the side of the house woke me. My rational self declared that it was our neighbors' Bengals-viewing-party in full swing with people coming in and out of the house and calling to each other. My inner child became convinced someone was invading the house through a downstairs window.

I was reminded of the time when, pregnant with Ainsley, I heard a loud crash in our house on a night when Jason was out playing cards with some friends. Something maternal took over, and I grabbed our cordless phone (with the "9" and the first "1" dialed to save time later) and a dull chef's knife (no harm to anyone unless they were made of butter) and started down the stairs of our bilevel to investigate. About halfway down, I was reminded of how most horror-movie victims meet their ends: by going to investigate. So I stood by the front door, posed to run, knife and phone still in hand just in case, and hollered out, "If someone's in here, I'm getting ready to call the police, and I have a weapon, so I suggest you get the #$&% out!" Yes, I know how bad-ass I am. When the boogeyman didn't oblige, I crept back upstairs, sagged into the recliner, and kept watch until the wee hours. At daylight, with the hubby a holler away, I got the nerve to investigate the noise. The source? An overturned drying rack in the laundry room that I had overloaded with clothes.

Remembering how it was nothing that time, I was able to drift off again last night. I was very glad when hubby came home, though, and I definitely slept better knowing he was there (even though his snoring woke me up once.)

I am just no good by myself.