Well, not exactly under my feet as I was in bed when the earthquake struck New Salem early this morn. The bed shook so hard I woke up and wondered what was going on. I'm the only one in my house that woke up.
In my sleep-addled fog was my first thought "Earthquake!"? Um, no. Lying there in the dark, I thought my house was haunted and there was a poltergeist shaking my bed. I started praying "Our Father"s and "Hail Mary"s. I'm not proud to admit it, but it's true. Oh, not that I pray. I do that every day. What makes me laugh at myself was the fact that my first thought was that some malicious spirit or whatever had moved in and was taking over.
That's what a childhood spent during the 1970's will do to you. That decade was the most frightening thing I can imagine: devil movies were a-plenty (The Omen, The Exorcist, Satan's School For Girls, and countless others - not that I watched them but I remember hearing snatches of them from the TV while I was in my room and being scared to death), Charles Manson and his group were still fresh in the American psyche, teenagers were scary, songs were creepy ("Witchy Woman", anyone?). Pair that with a child with a very active imagination and you get me.
A woman who, when woken from her slumber by a small earthquake, thinks Satan's snatching for her soul.
Oy.
In my sleep-addled fog was my first thought "Earthquake!"? Um, no. Lying there in the dark, I thought my house was haunted and there was a poltergeist shaking my bed. I started praying "Our Father"s and "Hail Mary"s. I'm not proud to admit it, but it's true. Oh, not that I pray. I do that every day. What makes me laugh at myself was the fact that my first thought was that some malicious spirit or whatever had moved in and was taking over.
That's what a childhood spent during the 1970's will do to you. That decade was the most frightening thing I can imagine: devil movies were a-plenty (The Omen, The Exorcist, Satan's School For Girls, and countless others - not that I watched them but I remember hearing snatches of them from the TV while I was in my room and being scared to death), Charles Manson and his group were still fresh in the American psyche, teenagers were scary, songs were creepy ("Witchy Woman", anyone?). Pair that with a child with a very active imagination and you get me.
A woman who, when woken from her slumber by a small earthquake, thinks Satan's snatching for her soul.
1 comment:
That's too funny. I thought my husband was shaking the bed and got really mad. Then I thought he might be having a seizure then I was scared. All of this went through my head before I sat up. We even had time to discuss whether it was an earthquake or a tornado. Kind of a long quake...
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