What Are You Afraid of the Dark?
What scares you?
I remember being three or four, playing Atari over at Aaron Presman's house, and one of the wires got loose. The screen went all wacky, and the pattern in the static looked kind of like crescent moons turned on their sides, which I saw as a series of closed human eyes. I became terrified and ran behind the couch, screaming, "I don't want them to open!" Why was I so frightened of the potential for eyes to open?
Was it because I thought there was a sleeping monster in the TV, and I didn't want it to wake up? Was I terrified of the dehumanizing symbolism of a suddenly anthropomorphized machine? Was I simply afraid of being startled if the eyes suddenly opened? I really don't know.
Then there was this episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, which as a show was so juvenile and hokey that it shouldn't scare anyone, but this one episode nearly made me crap myself. "The Tale of the Super Specs." This girl had these enchanted jokeshop x-ray glasses that, when she put them on, allowed her to see these extradimensional beings covered in black and without faces. Scared the bejesus out of me.
Maybe I'm afraid of things without eyes?
I remember being three or four, playing Atari over at Aaron Presman's house, and one of the wires got loose. The screen went all wacky, and the pattern in the static looked kind of like crescent moons turned on their sides, which I saw as a series of closed human eyes. I became terrified and ran behind the couch, screaming, "I don't want them to open!" Why was I so frightened of the potential for eyes to open?
Was it because I thought there was a sleeping monster in the TV, and I didn't want it to wake up? Was I terrified of the dehumanizing symbolism of a suddenly anthropomorphized machine? Was I simply afraid of being startled if the eyes suddenly opened? I really don't know.
Then there was this episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, which as a show was so juvenile and hokey that it shouldn't scare anyone, but this one episode nearly made me crap myself. "The Tale of the Super Specs." This girl had these enchanted jokeshop x-ray glasses that, when she put them on, allowed her to see these extradimensional beings covered in black and without faces. Scared the bejesus out of me.
Maybe I'm afraid of things without eyes?