my screams had meaning
they weren't just a tic
Who features most prominently in your nightmares?
There was a short time as a child that it was Darth Vader. I saw the first Star Wars movie as a child and Vader scared the living shit outta me.
I have memories of sleeping on the floor outside of my parents room.
No.
They didn’t let me inside. Nor did they try to comfort me.
It was the seventies. I’m Gen-x. What do you expect? I can still see him spiraling into space in my minds eye while I lay there shivering both due to the fact that we turned the heat down to ten degrees at night and that I was terrified.
I don’t know who wouldn’t let me in the room. It may have been my dad. It may have been my mom.
It doesn’t matter who. The were both busy and tired. They both had jobs and needed their sleep.
Though it did impact me.
If I ever meet a Brit with strained breathing or an oxygen tank?
Imma kicking the motherfucker down the stairs.
And if they’re elderly and in a wheel chair?
Fuck them.
They get the boot.
Lucky for me, my Star Wars nightmares didn’t last forever.
Lucky for me they were replaced by Mr. Rourke.
Well.
That’s not entirely true.
The man of my deepest nightmares was Ricardo Montalbán.
No, I did not live my childhood in fear of gregarious hosts with latino midgets assistants over excited by the sight of aircraft.
Nor do I begrudge people who look for Smiles, everyone smiles.
It wasn’t Mr. Rourke that I feared. It was another iconic character played by Montalban: Kahn.
Dear reader, I know what you’re thinking: This fool is racist. He hates Indian people.
This is not true. There was nothing ‘Indian’ about Montalban’s portrayal of Khan Noonien Singh aside from the characters name in the greatest Star Trek movie of all time: Star Trek II - The Wrath of Kahn.
Khann as a mutant superhuman was scary, but the stuff of my nightmares?
The bugs in the ears scene.
To recap: Khan wants to get info out of Checkov and the Captain of The Reliant.
He takes alien bugs and puts them in their ears.
It’s fucking gross and terrifying.
I had nightmares about this for years.
Check out this clip to be totally grossed out:
Worse still?
My dad KNEW how scary this was for me. Whenever he wanted to get a rise outta me he’d make a motion and say something like:
BUGS IN YOUR EARS!
I’d scream and squirm.
It was really effective. It made me long to dream about Darth Vader.
Ever since then, I’ve been VERY protective of my ears.
And today?
Well, almost fifty years later my vigilance has finally paid off.
While biking out around Pine Lake and Burnt Lake with Zeke, as I bashed through some bushes, I felt something fall into my ear.
Instinctively, I reached in.
IT WAS A FUCKING DEAR TICK - a lyme disease bearing monster.
I screamed and threw it away.
Zeke, who had a bad case of lyme last year insisted we stop and check for ticks.
We were clear.
But without my nightmares and my dad’s consistent antagonism, we might not have been as lucky.
To quote Jay-Z:
You say you’ve got lyme problems, I feel bad for you son
I’ve got 99 problems but a tick ain’t one.
Now go eat some chocolate covered grasshoppers before the locusts eat you, dipshits!