Confession #12

Superman changed my life. (No, really!)

When I was about ten, I woke up from a bad dream one night and was scared out of my wits. Thinking some light would help, I turned on two nightlights and a lamp. (That was all I dared due to my little sister, who had the nerve to continue sleeping, perfectly calm on the bottom bunk, while I was shaking in my boots.) No such luck. I was still utterly distressed. I then got it in my head that music would be comforting, or at least distracting, so I hobbled back down the bunk bed ladder, tiptoed across the floor with ninja speed, jabbed at my stereo to turn on the radio, then flew back up into my bed. Unfortunately, in the process of turning on the radio, I had pressed the seek button and abandoned my favorite preset station. What I was now listening to was a report of a UFO sighting.

If I were to hear the same report today, I would snicker or maybe roll my eyes and blame a weather balloon, then take just a couple seconds to ponder the existence of alien life before forgetting it and going on my merry way. Back then, though, I was too young to discern UFOs (that is, any object up in the sky that cannot be identified but in the end is more than likely a very common and perfectly explainable thing of Earth) from alien spacecrafts. Being that I was already scared from my nightmare, I assumed the worst and was sure there was an invasion and we were all in terrible, horrible danger.

Naturally I ran as quickly as my little legs would carry me and didn't look back. When I skidded to a halt at my parents' bedroom door, I knocked and begged to come in. When my mom opened the door, I caught sight of the television. By coincidence, the show was talking about aliens, and the screen currently featured a still image of a very grotesque little gray man. The gravelly voice that crawled from the speakers was rambling about alien sightings, which I immediately believed was connected to the radio report I had just overheard. This solidified my belief that the world was doomed, but rather than stay in the safety of my parents' room and have to listen to the TV talk about it, I allowed my mom to convince me to go back to bed. Once there, I tossed and turned and shook and probably whimpered a little.

Before you laugh this off as a kid just being a kid and being overly dramatic about a bad dream one night, you should know that the fear didn't stop there. From that night on, I was terrified, terrified by the thought of aliens. I couldn't sleep at night because every time I closed my eyes, I saw that creepy gray thing from the TV. When I finally did fall asleep, I would dream about them. In addition to plain old bad dreams, I had severe nightmares two or three times a week for months, and my parents stopped letting me watch anything even slightly creepy on the TV because I tried to crawl in bed with them so often.

I was afraid to be outside at night, or even look out a window, because I just knew that the blinking red aviation lights atop transmission towers, or the small but constant beam of light from an airplane were really flying saucers coming to get me. Just the sound of an airplane flying overhead made me shudder, even in the daytime. I started insisting that my mom leave my bedroom door open at night so I could see the light coming from the living room and hear my parents moving around, and make a quick escape if need be. When I was in bed, I pulled the covers up so far I could barely see out from under them and refused to let so little as half a toe hang off the side of the bed, because I was convinced that if the aliens couldn't see me, they would leave me alone.

At one point I decided that it wasn't safe at all to be alone at night, and that I had to be with somebody at all times. Obviously my three-year-old sister couldn't offer me any protection, so I started hanging around my parents once the sun went down. Around eight or nine o'clock my parents would go to their bedroom to watch TV and unwind before bed, and I would beg to watch TV with them. At first they obliged me a handful of times a week, but after a while (I don't even remember how long it was, but it was probably at least a few months) they started turning me away more often than not.

When that happened, I would sit outside their door, flat up against the wall, as low to the ground as possible, because if I couldn't see out the front door in the nearby mirror's reflection, nobody and nothing outside the door could see me. For a while I would beg and plead over and over until they got aggravated enough to yell at me to go away, and when that happened I would just sit there silently until it was my bedtime. (Then I darted to my room and jumped under the covers as fast as I possibly could.)

 In the seventh grade I made a new friend, and I spent the night at her house often. We both enjoyed hanging out outside and roaming around her neighborhood (I think we actually spent more time outside than inside) and she enjoyed being outside after dark. I tried to play it cool, but I was petrified most of the time. It literally made me shake with fear. (Luckily it was dark, so I don't know if she ever noticed.) Once we got really close, I broke down and 'fessed up about my fears. She then took it upon herself to cure me. This involved more playing outside after dark. I didn't like it one bit, but I slowly got to where I could at least enjoy myself most of the time without constantly glancing behind me every time a tree's leaves rustled in the wind.

This excludes, of course, the night we were playing make believe in the drainage ditch (one of those really deep concrete ones, deep and steep enough that I had difficulty climbing out) and she brought aliens into the mix. Lots of aliens. And a mother ship. And eggs and spawn. That night, I was silently (maybe semi-silently) flipping out the entire time. We were as far from her house as we could possibly be without actually leaving the neighborhood, and I just knew that real aliens would hear us talking and swoop down and snatch us before we could flee to safety. My voice kept wavering and cracking because I was so scared, and she kept telling me "Calm down! We're fine! Nothing is going to happen!" I didn't calm down until well after we went back inside for the night.

After that she tried fixing me with a different approach. "Why are you afraid of aliens?" "I... I don't know. I just am." "No, that's not good enough. Tell me why." Well, I really didn't know why, and her attempt at finding the root of my fear failed, and I continued to be frightened.

I really can't express just how scared I was. This fear haunted me daily (and especially nightly) and made me nothing short of miserable. I can't tell you how many nights I woke up crying or how many nights I just didn't sleep period. For a long time, I was even afraid to look at the moon! All because of aliens!

And then I saw a rerun of the show Smallville on ABC Family.

Once when I was eleven, I was home alone on a dark, stormy, cliched night, and I scared myself watching it. (Pete almost got eaten! Ack!) I never tuned in again after that, but I was thirteen now, and after finding it while channel surfing, I decided to watch and see if it was as scary as I remembered it being. I was rewarded with a sweet scene between Clark Kent and Lana Lang up in the loft of the Kent farm's barn.

It was just minutes from Clark's birthday and Lana presented him with a tiny cake. He got all angsty because it wasn't really his birthday but rather a date his adoptive parents had chosen from the calendar, and Lana murmured, "Maybe some of us want to celebrate the day you came into our lives." Awwww. Hopeless romantic that I am, I watched on. "I never thought of it that way," Clark grinned. Lana told him to make a wish. "I've been wishing for the same thing ever since I was five," he said, looking deeply into her eyes. "And now?" "Now I don't have to. She's standing right in front of me." They kissed and I squealed with glee because they were just so cute. I decided then and there that the show was worth watching.

As it happens, I had jumped in during a marathon. I got sucked in and watched it all. The first two episodes I saw were the two-part finale of the second season, where a bunch of stuff happens, but mainly Clark learns more about his alien heritage and defies his dead-but-still-controlling alien father. It should be noted that at this point, I had not yet realized that I was watching a show about a young, pre-Superman Superman. I don't know exactly where I thought Clark had acquired his superpowers, but it certainly never crossed my mind that he was an alien.

 Upon learning this, I faltered for a few minutes, shifted uncomfortably in my seat, then kept watching. The more I watched, the more I loved the show, and after the marathon ended, I tuned in every weeknight for a rerun so I could catch up on the whole series. I grew more and more addicted until it didn't bother me at all that Clark Kent was an alien. Some bizarre logic in my mind must have decided that if he was an alien, then I didn't need to be scared. Just like that, four years of sheer terror and sleepless nights were undone. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!


I haven't been afraid of aliens for six years now, and it's all thanks to Superman!


Side note: Unfortunately I grew to dislike the show's writing, and after sticking it out for three years, I forced myself to quit watching in the middle of the eighth season. I bawled like a baby with my last episode, but I never looked back. (Except that one time I turned my TV on just a little too soon, and instead of a new episode of Supernatural, I was greeted with Clark and Lois kissing, and it made me want to puke. Don't tell me Superman belongs with Lois Lane because I don't want to hear it. Any other time I'd agree, but with Smallville's writing in the first several seasons, and the chemistry between Tom Welling and Kristin Kreuk, Clark jumping into Lois's arms the minute Lana is gone just isn't believable! Especially since Clark and Lana never wanted to part in the first place! </rant>)

 Side note #2: Looking back, I have come to the conclusion that my parents were watching a show on the History Channel that night when I was ten. They run programs on aliens and theories about aliens and whatnot fairly often, and my dad frequently watches that channel for hours on end.

Side note #3: I entered all of this into OpenOffice.org Writer to check the word count, and this post is longer than the minimum daily goal for National Novel Writing Month, but it took me less than half the time it would have taken me to write that many words for a novel. So not cool.