Things That Go Bump in the Night

I am not a big television viewer anymore, partially because I just do not have the time to watch it, partially because I prefer to read, but mostly because I find the vast majority of shows on network tv to be either utterly inane or gratuitously violent. There is a whole category of shows that are ingeniously both, and are often titled along the lines of When *****s Attack.

But there isn't a lot to do in the hospital, and when your mom, who is being quite the trooper, is tired of Scrabble and wants to watch tv, that's what you do. It was my fault for mocking the sickeningly sweet teen movie "What a Girl Wants," but honestly, what was Colin Firth thinking? Why is every teen movie now the girl who's really a princess gets the guy, the dad, the dress, and a full ride to Oxford while Miley Cyrus sings some barf-inducing closing theme? Being raised on John Hughes films where all the girl wants is her first kiss, the characters were all actually interesting, and the Psychadelic Furs and Otis Redding were on the soundtrack, I just wonder what happened to the writers guild.

Anyway, I should have bitten my tongue, because my "oh, puke" comment at the end of What A Girl Wants caused my mother to turn to what I will refer to as Crime TV, where every show involved the re-enactment of some true-life horror story. This is a channel that isn't entirely inane nor exactly gratuitously violent, but it does make the most of deliberately jarring camera angles and bad visual effects intended to convey Hitchcock, but mostly leaving the viewer in a near epileptic seizure from the flashing lights. The tone of every show is "This Could Happen to YOU," and is probably heavily subsidized by the NRA. Clearly my mother has been watching a fair amount of this programming; while like every mother she can spot the way an activity can or has lead to someone's death, I've noticed an uptick in the number of ways in which she believes one might be harmed or worse, as well as the increased likelihood thereof. Now having watched several episodes of When Pirates/Children/Fugitives/Crazed Relatives Attack, I believe i have found the underlying cause of aforementioned uptick.

Shortly before we left the other night, the show was all about violent criminals and drug cartel members crossing the border and murdering, molesting, and robbing people across the southwest. Despite my best efforts to bury my nose in my book, Congressional procedure was no match for the show. After dinner, my father and I kissed Mom goodnight and headed back to the house. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by some gutteral screams and much thumping around downstairs. Still on East Coast time and generally in an exhaustion-fed trance, I crept into the dark hallway, and all I could think was "oh my god, it's all true!! I'm under attack!!" Strangely, I did not wake up enough to actually investigate further, which is especially odd given that I actually have had people try to break in my domicile before, whereupon I have called the police. Instead, I grabbed the nearest thing I felt could be used as a weapon if necessary and went back to bed.

And that is how I found myself curled up with the fire extinguisher the next morning. I am still not sure what I thought I was going to do with it. Create a massive smoke cloud and make my escape? Bash the attacker in the head with it? Or both? All I can say is that after my father fed the yowling cat who awoke him with her nightime crazies, it is a VERY good thing he didn't decide to check in on me.

So today, I presented my mom with a Valentine's Day stack of all the coolest art, architecture, and food magazines (along with a couple of fashion and gossip rags) that Borders had in stock which, along with the stack of happy-ending DVDs and the deluxe Scrabble board, will hopefully assist all of us with sleeping more peacefully at night.