As I get older there is less and less I understand. So different from when I was young. Then, as each day passed, I could feel the fount of my wisdom fill to overflowing.
By the time I was 12, I had life sorted and could not understand the daft ways of those so-called adults who made up my world. If I could have just sat them down for five minutes, all could have been explained to them. It was not complicated.
Then along came puberty, that great harbinger of chaos. In theory and practice. Since when, many a time and oft’, have I lamented the loss of sanity that went with no longer being 12.
Of the more irrational things that comes with being adult I would include watching horror films. Some are not merely content to do so in the comfort of their own homes. No, they insist on sitting among strangers in a darkened cinema, where they scream in utter terror. Out of their minds among others.
Truly, it bewilders me.
If there were such a word I would say I suffer from horrorphobia. Wild horses could not drag me to watch a horror movie, anywhere.
I am now even Hitchcock-averse and have seen that famous shower scene in Psycho just once. It was enough. Similarly, with his Rear Window. Some say it is Hitchcock's greatest but all that made it bearable for me that one time were the performances of a luminous Grace Kelly and the incomparable James Stewart.
Give me a good drama, comedy, documentary, a cartoon (I love cartoons/animated films – the 12-year-old again),even bad ones, anytime.
Keep your horror. I would prefer to chew my toenails (athleticism and taste allowing) rather than sit in the dark as, on-screen, blood gushes everywhere from gaping wounds in some hitherto innocent, defenceless creature or other. Worse, is anticipating just such an event. Where is the entertainment in that?
If people truly need the thrill of the gruesome why not just watch the TV news, any night, or take a sideways look at the latest bank statement?
Let’s face it, people are weird. Some, undoubtedly, more so than others.
I, on the other hand, only aspire to being 12 again. All the time.
My sanity cause.
Horror: from Latin horror, meaning dread, shaking, trembling.
inaword@irishtimes.com
