January 30, 2008


Monstrous Contingency Plans

By the time I was eight (maybe nine) years old, I’d given a lot of thought to the possibility of being pursued by a variety of fiends and had mapped out monster-specific contingency plans. Lumbering zombies and mummies didn’t much worry me, but I do recall working out two distinct protocols in the event I was chased home from school by (a) a werewolf or (b) a vampire.

posted by Sheila Ryan in advice, how to, memory 

comments

6 Responses to “Monstrous Contingency Plans”

  1. Deron Bauman on January 30th, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Sheila, the fact that you are still with us is proof that your contingencies worked.

  2. Michael Grant Smith on January 31st, 2008 at 5:49 am

    Sure, it’s “Sheila”, but at night is she really (a) a werewolf or (b) a vampire?

  3. Daryl Scroggins on January 31st, 2008 at 9:04 am

    When I was about six years old my parents often took me with them to the drive-in theater to see movies like The Blob and It Came From Outer Space. Even though I usually slept through big portions of such movies, I always saw enough to give me terrible nighmares for months. After seeing The Blob I developed a practice of standing on my bed at night, against the wall–which gave me enough room to get a running start for jumping almost all the way to my bedroom door in the pitch dark, over the creeping tar that surely enveloped the bed as soon as I left it. I’m sure it was there; the floor couldn’t possibly have been that dark otherwise.

  4. Cindy Scroggins on January 31st, 2008 at 10:12 am

    When I was 4 and saw Godzilla tromping through Tokyo, I felt sure that I could get away on my big tricycle. I remember feeling sorry for all those poor people without tricycles.

  5. Sheila Ryan on January 31st, 2008 at 11:46 am

    A 2001 episode of “This American Life” devoted to “Babysitting” features a wonderful segment titled “What Big Teeth You Have”:

    Lots of babysitting is done by family members. Hillary Frank reports on what can happen when a teenaged son is put in charge of his younger brothers. It’s not pretty. (14 minutes)

    Monstrous contingencies come into play if your brother is a werewolf, that’s for sure. Give it a listen.

  6. Cindy Scroggins on January 31st, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    I should have listed public radio as one of the things that saved me. If you haven’t heard Terry Gross’s interview with Gary Larson, in which he discusses his childhood fear of monsters, you’re in for a treat:
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1469480

    The monster segment begins about 1/3 of the way through, if you’re pressed for time.

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