Years ago in Pittsburgh, my friends liked to go to the popular local Halloween parade around this time. Often they brought back descriptions of what they saw–for example someone who painted his body with paints with blood dripping from a fake wound. I don’t believe that’s body paint. Since it is cold, like today, around 45F, typical weather for western Pennsylvania at the end of October. He’s probably wearing a painted body suit, the Thermo kind for sure.
I was too lazy to go and I usually belonged to the group that binge watched several scary movies. The problem is that any kind of Asian get-together is an occasion for food. We all brought food and then cooked together and it’s usually in somebody’s home. It ended up nobody really took the scary movies seriously since the place is so noisy that even the victim’s scream couldn’t grab people’s attention. There was always one or two who glued their eyes to the TV screen. They would from time to time report the progress of the plot. When a bloody scene was coming soon, they would call people’s attention, but more often than not, it’s false alarm.
“Hi, you call that scary?”
“No, that’s certainly not. I thought X or Y was going to get killed, but no. That’s not it.”
“Call us when something really scary comes up. We need to attend to our hot pot here.”
“You know what’s really scary in real life? There’s no sound at night.”
“That’s not really scary. The really scary part is that sometimes you suddenly find yourself the only one in a big building.” L said. He’s working in a biology lab and that happens to him pretty often at night.
“I tell you something really scary. One day when I came back home from the lab at night, a wolf or coyote followed me. I ran like crazy.”
“Oh, shut up. That’s not. Most likely it’s somebody’s dog. You don’t know a coyote even if you see one.”
“You guys talk too much around the hot pot. I can’t concentrate here. English is not my first language and it doesn’t penetrate my ear as easily. If you talk, my attention will be drawn to what you are saying.”
“How could people stop talking around a hot pot?”
Last Halloween was the first time I seriously binge watched Scary Movie 1 to 5. I paid undivided attention to what I watched and food was not a distraction. I have to say after the second in the series, I stopped feeling so scared, probably due to the fact that the movie’s quality goes down which is typical in a series. However it’s also possible that I developed a scary fatigue, whatever that is. I don’t know if such a thing really exists. If somebody is scared several times, can he build up a tolerance for it?
Anyway, I don’t feel like binge watch scary movies this year. I don’t know why. Probably pandemic and global politics are scary enough that I don’t need any fictional scare to perk me up.
Haoyan Do 