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When I was a late teenager, I took my Grandmother to see a movie. Not just any old movie because I did not think a lot of the movies out at that time would appeal to her. I took her to see the original Exorcist. I had read the book over the spring and summer, and it caused a few nights when I could not sleep well thinking about the ramifications of that book. When the movie came out those thoughts started all over again. For me there is only one way to get over things like this. Go meet whatever is bothering me and come to terms with it.

Taking my Grandmother to a movie came about because I was at my Grandmother’s house for dinner on a Sunday afternoon. I mentioned the movie was out. My Grandmother was an almost daily church goer, gave her thanks for each meal, said her prayers waking up in the morning, and before going to sleep at night. I was expecting any reaction except an agreement that she would not mind going to see the movie. So we decided to go either following weekend night when I had a day off.

We are seated in the theater and I am already uncomfortable because my imagination is vivid enough, and I knew the movie would fill in any empty spaces that my mind had failed to paint for me. My Grandmother on the other hand sat perfectly poised just like she was sitting at her own kitchen table. I won’t go through the whole movie, that is not my point, so fast forward to where it starts getting scary. Your participation is needed here to think of a place in the movie where you start feeling as if you are taken from your comfort zone. And then you hear your Grandmother sitting in the dark next to you laughing while watching the movie. I came back to reality, and looked around the theater and I was not alone, everyone I could see in the projectors light had a look of both suspense and a small amount of discomfort except my Grandmother! You would have thought she was watching a comedy!

She was an Irish woman, and not much in this world rattled her, but this was something I never expected! Having my Grandmother laughing out loud in the scariest parts of a movie about possession was almost as unsettling as the movie itself! I thought she may have had a stroke or something else happened to her after the lights went out. There were a few times in the move when other people looked at her wondering what this little gray haired lady found to laugh about. I was sure there was a medical emergency, even though I could not detect anything wrong with her. Then the movie ended. Most of us were scared to look at each other while we were leaving the theater. We had come as close to supernatural evil as we cared to for one night and we did not want to see frost coming out of someone’s mouth or their head spin on their shoulders.

I asked my Grandmother what she found funny about that movie, as it had once again managed to terrify me with the over sized full color imagery and movie quality sound track. My Grandmother told me that this movie did not begin to match what she had seen and experienced in her life, and they would have to do better than that to scare her. I really was not up to asking her what she could have seen in her life that was scarier than that. I drove her back to her house, and she made us all a cup of tea and put out some cookies. I drank my tea, and ate my cookies as we talked about the more mundane things in our world. I remember thinking besides how was I going to sleep that night, that some things are better left alone out of sight. It was not for a couple of years that I really wanted to hear about what she had seen or experienced that made the Exorcist so funny.

Technorati Tags: grandmother, imagination, movie, possession, scary movie

Comments (0) Oct 11 2007