| The purpose of Confessions of a Scaredy Cat is to tell the stories of my childhood fears spurred by terrifying movies I saw at too early an age. Now as an adult, after all this time, I have never shaken those images out of my head. I’m left pondering the reasons why I was so frightened, why the nightmares recurred for so long, and what was the meaning of it all. This book is the pursuit of that meaning, to find the truth in my life shaped by those early years. It is also the pursuit of the purposes behind these movies that so unnerved me. I may not be frightened of those pictures anymore, but they still haunt me, and so I have to find out why.;The impressions these movies left on me shaped both my childhood and my adult personalities. As a child, I barely slept due to the nightmares and many days were filled with burdensome anxiety. But during those days I played like any kid would—I had an older brother and a best friend and just being with them was both a normal part of growing up and was also cathartic for my terror-filled nights. My parents, too, played a role in this “therapy,” sometimes unaware. All these ideas, from scary movies to childhood playing to fearful nightmares, are pieces of some long lost mystery to me, some undefined purpose. So, as I look back, I want to put the pieces together to uncover the truth of my own early life and the truth behind the movies in order to reveal their true intentions (this often being presented in short sections between certain passages and chapters).;The structure of Scaredy Cat is a series of mostly chronological personal essays each covering an aspect of either the cause of fears or the coping with fears. It begins with the essay, “Entering the Black Hole” and seeing a vision of Hell and witnessing murder by evisceration in the Disney movie, The Black Hole, when I had just turned five. With difficulty separating fantasy from reality (as any kid would have), the nightmares began. At the same time I was growing-up-boy in the early 80s in a small town. The tumultuous nights continued nevertheless and the images and the fears became hard to shake especially when images from the movie Poltergeist invaded my consciousness, which I write about in the essay, “Clown College.” Then I face real-life fears including a teacher I believed was a witch (“The Witch and the Unicorn”) as well as my grandmother’s death and my best friend moving away (“Nine-Year-Old Notes”)—not to mention the deception leading me to see Gremlins and not knowing what I was going to experience (“Gift of the Mogwai”). Finally, I reflect on my (so far) short time as a father and how I approach movies and nightmares with my two daughters (“The Other Side of the Screen”). At the end, I return to where it all started and take a closer look at The Black Hole through my older, and hopefully wiser, mind, to finally unveil its true nature and find the meaning behind the fear I have searched for all my life (“Closing the Black Hole”). |
