Bigfoot
There was apparently a Bigfoot sighting in my hometown recently. The newspaper ran a story in its online version. (They only publish one story a day online...so it must have been big news.)
It referred to the famous 1967 Bigfoot film footage that terrified me as a kid. It terrified me not just because to my 12-year-old mind it made it seem as if the Sasquatch myth might not be a myth after all, but also because it was a little too close to home! After seeing that footage, I lived in fear that Bigfoot lived in all of our local woods. If there were trees, he might be there. I don't recall it ever occurring to me that there might be more than ONE Bigfoot creature or even a family of Dad, Mom and the kids. I just thought there was one huge scary Bigfoot roaming my county. I spent a lot of time lying awake at night fearful that Bigfoot was out there somewhere.
I also spent an enormous amount of what-should-have-been-sleeping time worrying over how soon California might fall into the ocean, since I had heard my mother tell someone that some psychic was predicting that would happen...and soon. (Parents should really be more careful about what they say in front of the kids.) I used to pray that we would move to Nevada.
And we won't even go into how I believed that Lee Harvey Oswald's ghost lived in my Dad's bedroom closet. That creeped me out no end.
Childhood was exhausting. I was a prime candidate for Xanax. Or maybe it's just that insomnia exacerbates an already vivid, overactive imagination. I did used to wonder if all the other kids were fretting over the same stuff I was. Guess not, since they all went on to do stuff like go to college...and have a career. No wonder I felt clueless at 18. Who had time to think about a future, when there were scary things to worry about...right now?!
It referred to the famous 1967 Bigfoot film footage that terrified me as a kid. It terrified me not just because to my 12-year-old mind it made it seem as if the Sasquatch myth might not be a myth after all, but also because it was a little too close to home! After seeing that footage, I lived in fear that Bigfoot lived in all of our local woods. If there were trees, he might be there. I don't recall it ever occurring to me that there might be more than ONE Bigfoot creature or even a family of Dad, Mom and the kids. I just thought there was one huge scary Bigfoot roaming my county. I spent a lot of time lying awake at night fearful that Bigfoot was out there somewhere.
I also spent an enormous amount of what-should-have-been-sleeping time worrying over how soon California might fall into the ocean, since I had heard my mother tell someone that some psychic was predicting that would happen...and soon. (Parents should really be more careful about what they say in front of the kids.) I used to pray that we would move to Nevada.
And we won't even go into how I believed that Lee Harvey Oswald's ghost lived in my Dad's bedroom closet. That creeped me out no end.
Childhood was exhausting. I was a prime candidate for Xanax. Or maybe it's just that insomnia exacerbates an already vivid, overactive imagination. I did used to wonder if all the other kids were fretting over the same stuff I was. Guess not, since they all went on to do stuff like go to college...and have a career. No wonder I felt clueless at 18. Who had time to think about a future, when there were scary things to worry about...right now?!
posted by Marilyn at 6:57 AM
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