Laughing at other people's terror

My first marriage was a rocky one. We moved up to Dumas, a small town in the panhandle where my wife was born and where her parents lived. Being suddenly thrust into a town where I knew no one and where there were none of my usual interests put me in a bit of a spot. Everyone was friendly, but there weren't many people I could connect with.

At one point, the company I worked for changed their vacation schedule to synchronize it with the calender year instead of the fiscal year. Those of us with days left to take had to take them before the end of the period. I took four Fridays in a row off, and spent the extra time with my daughter.

Those were good days. I would sleep in (my insomnia was worse back then), write for a few hours or drive down and explore Amarillo, then pick Maddy up from the babysitters a couple of hours early. My wife was in a work-study program at the time, so we had the rest of the day to ourselves. These were Maddy-Daddy days.

We would go to the park, stop by the library to return books and check out new ones, play games, and read together. We had fun. Being the skilled chef that I am, when it was time for dinner I would boil water to make macaroni and cheese, and open a can of corn or some other vegetable that we both enjoyed. Before bed, we would watch some TV together.

Around that time, MTV came up with a new reality show called 'Fear.' They would gather a group of young, enthusiastic kids and drop them in an abandoned prison, hospital, or some other place that would make a good setting for a B-list horror movie. I've never had a taste for reality shows, because the concept has the same flaws that you'll find in true crime books and movies 'Based on a true story.' Reality doesn't make a good story, not unless you chop out a lot of the relevant facts.

But Fear, and all the similar shows that followed it gave me something I could use: an illustrated guide on how people scare themselves. I don't think that any of those kids found real ghosts, and I'm highly suspicious that it's become common practice to have some member of the production crew hidden at the location to slam doors, move objects, and open windows when no one else is looking. But the show, and the current shows, often managed to get the mood and tone down near-perfect. The kids were the stars, and deservedly so. They made up their own reasons why the spirits are either trying to communicate with them or telling them to get out. They nervously crept down into basements with rats, leaking pipes, and broken windows, wondering where those squeaking, dripping, and whispering sounds were coming from. Clutching each other in the dark, with one light right on each person's face (so the camera could get a good shot) and one focused light that only let them see a few feet ahead, they never let their night vision build up. Take away the scary back-story, or just let them perform all their tasks during the day, and the series would have been like every other reality show. Just overacting drama.

You haven't gotten the impression I didn't love watching it, though, have you? Or that I don't take advantage of the fact that SyFy has episodes of a similar series up on their website? Sorry, but when it comes to scaring people, I'll get out the Dots and the popcorn. My daughter got her share of giggles and smiles out of it, too.

Wow, thinking about that makes me want to write.