Lost in the Twilight Zone

I just heard the Twight Zone music drift in from across the hall. That resident doesn't hear well, so she shares her favorite tv shows with the rest of us. 

This place is a bit like being in another dimension. In fact, my entire life these days is empty of time or dimension. For all I know, this entire nursing home, grass and all, is floating in the black void of space. I wouldn't know. I never leave my room, and it's been ages since I was in a wheelchair and able to look out the front door.

If I sound a little twisted, blame it on the old black and white episodes of the Twilight Zone. I was about 10 when it first came on. My dad was a sci-fi fan, so we watched it every week. Every. Single. Week.

Before long, I put a radio on my bookcase headboard, volume just loud enough for me to hear it. I did that so, if I woke up in the middle of the night, I'd hear it and know that everybody else in the world hadn't died. That was back when humans ran radio stations. I lay backwards in my bed so I could reach the window next to the bottom of my bed and put my head on the windowsill. I often fell asleep this way, drifting off while watching for alien spacecraft.

Then I saw an ad -- just an ad on a b&w tv, mind you -- for The Blob. The image of people running, terrified and screaming, out the front doors of a movie theater while The Blob lumbered after them, squishing its way through the door openings is etched indelibly in my memory. I was scared out of my socks. There wasn't much I could do to protect myself from it, so I cowered in my bed until the ads stopped showing.

I don't remember why, exactly, I came up with my next paranoid plan. I had a lot of stuffed animals. I reasoned that, if I covered myself with my stuffed animals while I slept, then if anybody came in and tried to stab me, he would stab the stuffed animal and I'd be saved. Poor stuffed animals. I loved them, but was ready to sacrifice them in order to save my own neck.

I think the crowning occurance in my little paranoia-land was going to the movies with my dad. This had never happened before, to my knowledge, so it was a rare treat. I loved my daddy an awful lot, so I was happy to go anywhere with him.

The movie we saw was The Incredible Shrinking Man. I don't remember much about it, except for the tiny man fighting a giant spider with a sewing needle. That was it for spiders, as far as I was concerned.

I began to ride my bike all the time, often having daring adventures as Zorro's sidekick. It was much healthier for me. I eventually grew out of the paranoia. Mostly.

So if I seem a little odd, just a little twisted, with a tinge of paranoia, blame it on Twilght Zone. I do.