Tags

, , , , , ,

It’s finally getting hot here in Utah. We’ve had almost the driest winter on record. Now we’ve had one of the wettest springs and it’s still getting pretty chilly at night. So I was lying there in bed wide awake at 2 a.m. with just a sheet covering me, and it struck me anew what a big deal that is for me that I would only be covered with a sheet. My whole life I’ve HAD to sleep under a sheet AND blanket when I get chilly, even in the summer. Why, you might ask… (Thank you very much for that segue into my next paragraph!)

one step beyondYears ago when I was very young, seven or eight, I saw an episode on Alco Presents One Step Beyond where a young woman goes to visit her aunt who was estranged from the girl’s recently deceased mother. Despite whatever past events caused the estrangement between the sisters, the evening’s visit goes well and the girl is feeling quite comfortable as she drifts off to sleep in mom’s old room in the house where the family grew up. Suddenly in the middle of the night she wakes thinking she feels something crawling on her. She swats at whatever it is only to realize it’s not a bug – the sheet itself is CRAWLING down her body!

girl in bed screamingAs you can imagine, the ensuing scene is full of screams and hysteria…and the angry aunt laughing her keister off! Seems when she was a young girl, the sister and one of her friends played the same joke on her and scared the bloomin’ tar out of her. And you know what they say, about payback being a b*tch…

Suffice it to say, that One Step Beyond episode scared the beejeebers out of me, too, and I was NEVER able to sleep with just a sheet on after that. EVEN in the dead of horrendously hot, humid August summer nights. It’s only been within the last ten years or so I’ve noticed my tendency to choose comfort over childish fears.

I still think about that TV show every now and then. It just proves, at least to me, that you never know what kind of things your kids are going to see on TV that are going to change their lives, maybe forever.

What about any of you? Have you ever watched a TV show that’s changed you somehow for better or for worse? Leave me a comment and tell me all about it.