You are probably wondering what the hell that title means.... It is in reference to an incident that happened years ago.... Make that a few of decades ago. When I was growing up, we had a dachshund named Cleopatra, Cleo for short. At night, she slept in her doghouse, right at the bottom of the back door steps. She was also put on a small chain at night that was about 8 feet long.
One night, my best friend Peggy came over to my house to spend the night. Typical kids, we stayed up way too late watching TV. They were rebroadcasting a "made for TV movie" called Helter Skelter, which was based on the book of the same name. For those who don't know, it was about Charles Manson and his "family" and the murders they commited back in the 60's. (Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, etc.) Anyway, it was a four hour mini-series and they happened to show the first two hours late this particular night. I don't think it ended until about 1:00am.
The scene that sticks out most in my mind was at the very end. Charles Manson had been arrested and the trail was already underway. The prosecutor looks down at his watch and notices that it has stopped. He looks up then and looks right at Manson and noticed that Manson has been looking at him the whole time. When they make eye contact, Manson starts laughing. Of course, it is implying that he somehow stopped the watch. As far as I know, the whole thing could have been total BS. All I know, is that when you are young and impressionable, you will believe almost anything. Okay, my friend and I are now scared. It was time to go to bed. But, we weren't going to sleep in the house. No, we were going to sleep inside my parents trailer. Now, earlier in the day, that sounded fun. But, when it is 1:00am and you are scared, it's not so fun anymore. The house I grew up in was on a deep lot. The garage was all the way back into the backyard, with a long, long driveway to the street. The trailer sat in front of the garage. Back then, there were no streetlights, or backyard sodium vapor lights, or any of the security things we have now. It was pitch black. We went out onto the back porch and looked at the ten feet of sidewalk we would have to negotiate down to the driveway. We would also have to pass the entrance to the backyard, which was dark and had this huge, now scary looking tree, inside. At this time, Manson and his followers were locked up safely in their cells. But, my friend and I just knew that they were somewhere in the shadows, ready to jump out at us. We came down the steps and stood in front of the doghouse. The path to the trailer looked about 100 feet long from here. As we were getting up the nerve to walk down the path into the trailer, Cleo suddenly realized that there was a stranger in her midst. And she let us know. She lunged from the doghouse snapping, snarling and barking. She never touched us though. As soon as we heard that noise, we both screamed bloody murder. We easily made the ten foot path. Not only that, we bolted past the trailer, down the driveway and onto the sidewalk in fron of the house. And, we ran even further down the street. All this while screaming at the top of our lungs. It wasn't until we were about five houses down from ours, that we realized exactly what had happened. And then, we both started laughing, hysterically. Even with all that noise, we didn't wake up my parents, or any of the neighbors. But, it did put everything in perspective, and it was no problem for us to make our way back up the dark driveway and into the trailer.
Posted by Valkyre at April 2, 2004 06:28 PM