Putting the F back in Fun

When I was young I liked to take on those little side tackles of life. I liked to scare myself watching those horror movies and taking those plunging rides. It was fun and even tho I was piss scared before and during the rides, I pretended that I wasn't and took them on as gamely as my brave facade allowed me to, sometimes even going for seconds, and *gasp!* thirds and fourths. Even tho the horror shows turned me into the biggest scaredy cat when going to toilets alone dead in the nights and had me rush thru my baths like my butt was on fire. Then there were those haunting nightmares for several nights in a row before the intensity trailed off into a pitter patter of unidentified dark shadows making cameo appearances in other mosaic dreams.

But those were not the dark lords of the scary shit. The scariest thing happened as I grew older-- unconsciously I made the choice to no longer partake in heart-attack spills, gradually. I knew horror stuff scared the piss out of me, so I stopped going for any. I hated the way my heart dropped all the way to my feet and beyond just before guts-wrenching mountain-plunging rides so I made sure I was never in queue for one.

And so my life was peaceful. No horror, no dark shadows, no jump-out-of-nowhere scares, no nightmares, no falling dreams, no ups and no downs.

It was all flatly peaceful.

Then the unpredictability of human nature had to take over. After years of gradual shift away from the things that shortened my life by cutting away corners of my heart, out of nowhere and inspired by nothing, I began to wonder when I stopped taking the fun little risks in life. When I began to trade blood-pumping thrills for cloaked stagnancy. When I began to stop living life like I used to; getting on the little bumps riding on them falling off them getting bruised laughed at self for getting bruised and then climbing back on again.

There was last year when I didn't take the Aerosmith rides in MGM coz I was scared. This year when I squeezed my eyes shut for ninety percent of the time in the Haunted House for both times in Orlando and Tokyo coz I was an idiot. Last week when I didn't finish the walk in Ridley's Believe Or Not coz my guts left me right outside the horror chamber. And the time when I griped Lyc's arm so tightly while watching The Third Eye that she swore off watching anything remotely supernatural with me.

As I got flooded by those memories I began to feel sorry for myself for being a Melvin Udall ("as good as it gets") and wrapping up my glass heart in so thick a bubblewrap that I had difficulty feeling for many other things. Regrets are the nastiest little termites that gnaw you empty inside and make you feel like a hollow idiot. Now that I'm way past my 20, scared-free[almost] for the past few years, and having tasted both heart-gripping times and assumed peacefulness I begin to feel strangely tempted to be more adventurous again, to be the girl who screamed her lungs and kidneys and all the little intestines out, strapped in the seat of a roller-coaster gone mad. and complete eerie dimly-lit walks where stuff jumped out at you and dropped right on your head, and hollow screams filled the air.

Coz I rather my life shortened by the scares, then live a long one with a chestful of regrets.










Em.. just one request ? -- for your hand to hold mine, and your chest to bury my head into for all those rides and walks and shows. It's never over comforting to have someone walk thru stuff with you.