From a fairly young age, my mother instilled in me a healthy sense of paranoia. She is a long time fan of Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King so it's only natural that she is one to look over her shoulder, and because she is a good mother who loves her children, she taught us the same survival skills. For example, I don't walk alone in isolated areas. I don't take rides from strangers or eat or drink anything they give me. I don't pick up hitchhikers. I never park next to cargo vans, especially the kind that don't have any windows. I don't fear clowns to the extent that my mother would like, but I will admit, they are creepy and I don't trust them. When I sleep at night, the closet door must be completely closed. When I shower, I always always always leave the curtain half open. You just never know when a psychopath with mommy issues is going to attack.
I'm sure at this point, you're probably thinking that this is all common sense and for the most part, you're right, but if you didn't grow up with my mom teaching you everything she has learned from suspense novels and horror movies you might not recognize all the dangers that lay before you. My mom had a movie for every situation. The night before my first babysitting job, she rented When A Stranger Calls. Now if you've seen this, you know (spoiler alert) that if someone you don't know calls while you are babysitting and asks if you have checked the children, your only response should be to run screaming from that house. Don't feel guilty for not going upstairs to get the children, because they've been dead for hours. You just need to run!
The week before I left for college, my mother rented Looking For Mr. Goodbar. She made me and my best friend watch the movie with her so that at the end, in case we missed the lifesaving message, she could point out to us the dangers of meeting guys in bars. In case you haven't seen the movie, it ends with Diane Keaton being murdered by some guy she met in a bar. After the movie, I asked, "You couldn't just tell us that?" To which she replied, "I didn't want you to forget. I wanted to leave you with a lasting impression."
Lucky for me, I graduated with honors from Mom's Paranoia Prep School for Girls. All those years of training really paid off when I found my first dead body. Now up until that point, the only movie I'd seen about finding a dead body was Stand By Me. Well, when I found a dead body, I wasn't a 12-year old boy in the '50s and I wasn't on a coming of age journey with my closest friends. Trust me, Jerry O'Connell was nowhere to be found. I was in my very early 20s, newly married, and finishing up my degree. George and I were living close to campus in the nicest dump that we could afford. I was walking home from class one afternoon, and as I cut through a parking lot behind a local diner, I caught a glimpse of a man's fairly new shoe near the top of the heap in the dumpster. As I neared the trash, I noticed the shoe had a sock in it, and I found it odd that someone would discard a shoe with a sock in it like that. As my eyes went from the shoe to the sock, I noticed skin and hair and there it was, a leg buried in the trash in the dumpster behind the local diner just a few blocks away from my nice dump. I took one quick glance over my shoulder just to make sure no one was behind me. There was a small group of college kids eating lunch on the patio of the diner but no one else was in sight. I had been pretty casual about my discovery, not wanting to draw any attention to myself because I didn't know who put this body in the dumpster. It was obvious that he hadn't been there very long and I had learned from my mother's tutelage that you never can be sure who the bad guy is or who all may be involved. I pretended not to notice the body and I kept walking. With each step, my pace quickened until I was all but running to my door. By the time I got inside, I was crying and all I could think to do was to call my mom and tell her what I saw. This call served two purposes: 1) I needed someone I trusted to know I had found this body just in case those involved, in what I was certain was foul play, were following me, and 2) I needed my mom's clear head to tell me what to do next, which was, obviously, to call the police.
Oh how I wish I had the recording of that 911 call. I was so calm when the operator answered the phone, but by the time the words "dead body" passed over my lips I went racing into hysterics. The operator assured me that an officer would arrive at the dumpster in question momentarily and then she ended the call. As I began to regain my composure, there was a knock on my door. It was a pretty firm and loud knock. My heart started to pound. Had someone followed me home after all? I crept over to the door and peeked through the peep hole. When I saw that it was a police officer, I opened the door expecting him to ask me to show him where the body was. He was quick to inform me that he had already discovered the body....well, it wasn't exactly a whole body. He found the leg....well, it wasn't exactly a leg but a very realistic prosthetic. I questioned him, "Are you sure? It had hair and skin." Apparently, prosthetics are very realistic. Let me preface this by saying, I am so glad no one was harmed in the making of this momentous occasion in my life (it's not everyday I find a dead body...okay, it's not any day), but I was a little disappointed that I had gotten all worked up over this just to find myself crying so hysterically on the 911 call that the police officer wanted to let me know face to face that the prosthetic leg was going to be just fine. Looking back, maybe that was a young Ashton Kutcher and his buds eating lunch on the patio outside the local diner. In any case, that was just a drill. I'll be ready the next time I find a dead body in the dumpster.
No comments:
Post a Comment