Two things scared me as a child.
It'll probably come as no surprise to those of you who've known me for any length of time that those two things were NOT your typical childhood fears.
Nope. No monsters under the bed, no scary Bozo clowns haunting my dreams, no fear of angry dogs or poisonous snakes or anything like that.
Instead, I was afraid of two things — the coffins of dead presidents, and Jesus.
I can actually provide a fairly precise date for when my fear of presidential caskets began. Dwight D. Eisenhower went to Republican heaven on March 28, 1969, so we can estimate that his funeral took place within a few days after that — which makes me six years and two months old. For some reason, his coffin really freaked me out. I recall it being particularly tubular, like a huge, flag-draped sausage.
For years afterwards, I was afraid that ol Ike's coffin was going to be dropped beside my bed in the middle of the night — a fear that caused me to sleep with my head facing the right side of the bed for years. There was enough room on the left side of my room for the Ikester. The right side, however, didn't have nearly the room needed for anybody's coffin, sausage-shaped or not, so I slept with my head facing that way.
Somewhere along the line, and just to show that my presidential coffin fear was bipartisan, I also developed a fear that JFK's coffin was going to be raised outside our bathroom window. Where that one came from, I'll never know. Ich bin ein Turnpike Gardener!
My irrational fear of expired commanders-in-chief was nothing, however, compared to my fear of the portrait of Jesus that hung (and hangs still) in the bedroom hallway. Actually, pretty much any image of Jesus would do it, but that one in particular spooked the, er, bejesus out of me.
I'm not sure what it is about our lord that scared me so, but I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Jesus knew everything I did. Even at a young age, I was pretty sure that Jesus wouldn't dig some of the stuff I was up to, and frankly there were some things that I would've preferred He turn a blind eye to. But no, He sat and watched from his perch at the end of the hallway, and there wasn't much I could do about it.
I bring all this up because of a dream I had the other night. Way back when I was a little kid, I had a dream that haunted me for years. I dreamed that I was sleeping, but awoke to a light out in the street. I looked out, and there was Jesus, wearing white and glowing to beat the band. That was scary enough — but when he floated up from the street, through my window and began flying around my room, well, we're talking full-blown terror. It was years before I was able to look out my bedroom window at night again.
My latest Jesus dream came Monday night. I was back at my parent's house, turning on the Christmas lights. (That was my duty, back in the day. We always went all out on the Christmas lights, and I got a kick out of plugging them all in.)
I had just plugged in the last string of lights, when I looked up in the sky and saw, basically, the Shroud of Turin hanging over our house. This time, I wasn't afraid — actually, I was kind of angry. I shook my fist. "You don't scare me anymore, Jesus." And then, and I am not making up a word of this, the image turned from Shroud-of-Turin Jesus to, well, almost a "Precious Moments" or "Love Is" Jesus. Wide-eyed, cute n' cuddly...and then, he winked at me and I woke up.
As always, I invite the psychoanalysts among you to explain all THAT. Hope nobody thinks I'm being sacreligious or anything here, because that is most definitely NOT my intention — I really did dream all that stuff.
Hilarious, yet scary. (And this isn't even a perfume add). I have never really read a blog befoere. But I was reading your Elton John top 40 list and it had a "click on", or whatever you call it,to this. Ike eisenhower is scary anyway. And I won't even attempt to phychiatrize you on the Jesus pictures. A medical phobia heretofore known as (Hesuspicphobia). Anyway. I gotta go back and read the rest of the Elton John thing. And click on some more "click ons" in the article. I noticed though that it had a I believe 2006 year of writing. Are the click ons still valid? Oh they're called "links".
Posted by: ize | July 02, 2007 at 01:55 AM