Halloween Scrooge...
Oct. 31st, 2005 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThat's me.
I've never liked Halloween, not even as a kid. While costumes have their place, I could never see the fun in running around and ringing the doorbells of strangers. And what I particularly dislike about the season (which the radio informed me, during my drive home, is second in commercial value only to Christmas) is the fact that what little of interest there might be for me on the tube is shouldered aside for hours and hours of horror movies.
As you might guess, I'm no fan of horror movies. The House on Haunted Hill gave me nightmares when I was a child, and I don't think I've ever seen more than 10 minutes of The Excorcist, or The Amityville Horror, or any of that genre (at least, not if I could help it). Even the comedy romps with Abbot and Costello made me nervous as a kid.
While my dad and I were visiting my mom Sunday, her roommate - an ancient black woman who is wheeled out several times a day to smoke - had her television set to something featuring Winona Rider and a lot of screaming. That audio background, combined with the visual impact of the hospital beds and other medical paraphernalia, created a hollow feeling in my soul, and the word "bedlam" popped into my mind, followed a moment later by the etymology of that word.
One more night of this Halloween stuff, and it'll be over until next year.
* * * My last glimpse of my mom yesterday was reminiscent of her hospital stay during my previous trip. She was in bed, staring at the ceiling, not saying anything but giving out with a coughing fit from time to time. The nurses said she showed a slight fever the night before, which had gone down during the night after the introduction of fluids, and that they were keeping her in bed to let her rest. I don't know; lying in her bed like that, she looked feeble and frail to me, and her eyes - open but unseeing - got to me.
The difference between my mom sitting in her wheelchair and lying in bed like that made me think of the old vaudevillians who entertained audiences by spinning plates atop of flexible rods. Part of the act was to let the plates lose so much energy that they seemed sure to fall off the rod and crash to the stage. In her wheelchair, she seems to me like a plate spinning with moderate wobble; in bed, it seems as though she's a plate that's oh, so close to falling.
I don't know what it is about that nursing home, but the atmosphere sure makes my mind wander.
My dad and I didn't stay long, as he wanted to make sure we didn't miss the train. (Not only did we not miss it, we had time to leave the station for coffee and return, and still waited almost 30 min before I gathered my things to actually get on the train.)
* * * The trip north from Albuquerque went off well, though if I had known that our supplier's merchandise had not been shipped, I might've stayed to pick up some necessities. Then again, I would not have been able to file the store's quarterly unemployment insurance tax, which I just did online (Hooray, Colorado!). The rental car is a Ford Escape, and the rental rate is so attractive, I might just keep the car for a couple of days extra, so as to spread out the $50 drop-off fee.
Cheers...
I've never liked Halloween, not even as a kid. While costumes have their place, I could never see the fun in running around and ringing the doorbells of strangers. And what I particularly dislike about the season (which the radio informed me, during my drive home, is second in commercial value only to Christmas) is the fact that what little of interest there might be for me on the tube is shouldered aside for hours and hours of horror movies.
As you might guess, I'm no fan of horror movies. The House on Haunted Hill gave me nightmares when I was a child, and I don't think I've ever seen more than 10 minutes of The Excorcist, or The Amityville Horror, or any of that genre (at least, not if I could help it). Even the comedy romps with Abbot and Costello made me nervous as a kid.
While my dad and I were visiting my mom Sunday, her roommate - an ancient black woman who is wheeled out several times a day to smoke - had her television set to something featuring Winona Rider and a lot of screaming. That audio background, combined with the visual impact of the hospital beds and other medical paraphernalia, created a hollow feeling in my soul, and the word "bedlam" popped into my mind, followed a moment later by the etymology of that word.
One more night of this Halloween stuff, and it'll be over until next year.
The difference between my mom sitting in her wheelchair and lying in bed like that made me think of the old vaudevillians who entertained audiences by spinning plates atop of flexible rods. Part of the act was to let the plates lose so much energy that they seemed sure to fall off the rod and crash to the stage. In her wheelchair, she seems to me like a plate spinning with moderate wobble; in bed, it seems as though she's a plate that's oh, so close to falling.
I don't know what it is about that nursing home, but the atmosphere sure makes my mind wander.
My dad and I didn't stay long, as he wanted to make sure we didn't miss the train. (Not only did we not miss it, we had time to leave the station for coffee and return, and still waited almost 30 min before I gathered my things to actually get on the train.)
Cheers...
