The Mother Load

Published August 23, 2009
St. George Spectrum & Daily News

There’s a new movie out in theaters that I believe no sane person would want to see. It’s titled, “Grace,” and it’s a horror flick that tells the story of a smelly, undead baby that attracts flies and has a thirst for blood. However, the movie is really about the lengths to which Grace’s mother will go to keep her little bundle of terror alive…or undead…or deadlive. I don’t really know how these things work.

I bring this up today because (many thousands of dollars of therapy behind me) I do consider myself a sane person. Somehow, despite this sanity, I have an almost overwhelming desire to fork over eight of my hard earned dollars to see the creepy baby and her crazy, murdering mom on the big screen.

And this is coming from someone who does NOT handle scary movies well. After my first viewing of “The Sixth Sense,” I had to sleep with the lights on for a week. Stephen King’s “It” made me swear off clowns, spiders, and bathroom sinks for much longer than was hygienically sound. I think I actually threw up after watching five minutes of Corpse Bride, and that was a kid movie!

So, if I possess my alleged sanity, and if I already know horror films cause problems up to and including vomiting, why in the world would I even consider watching this movie? The answer is simple. It’s because I’m walking at night again.

Ever since I was 11, I’ve enjoyed walking around outside in the dark all alone. At that age, it was an early morning paper route that had me pounding the pavement around my neighborhood at 5:30 am. As I got older, early morning hours were replaced by late night hours, but my enjoyment was the same. I just like being outside while everyone else in the world is asleep.

Everyone else in the world except the rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and psychotic maniacs, of course. Someone once told me I was very brave to take my late night walks all alone. No doubt this person was thinking of the aforementioned late night dangers. I don’t think bravery is the right concept here. On a scale of one to stupid, it’s downright imbecilic for a lone woman to walk around outside in the middle of the night.

Since the real dangers of this habit don’t seem to phase me in the least, I have resorted to scaring myself in other ways to keep myself safely and responsibly behind lock and key after hours. If I’m not afraid of murderers and muggers, perhaps zombies and vampires will keep me indoors. If I’m not willing to believe the first step in female self defense is to not walk around alone at night, then perhaps the full moon and a healthy fear of werewolves will do the trick.

It seems like “Grace” is my safety fallback this year. Sure, an undead baby isn’t on par with a fully grown vampire or zombie. I hear stinky little Grace isn’t the kind of horror movie baby who can get around on her own. It’s the crazy, devoted mother in the movie that I’m hoping will be enough to induce psychosomatic paralysis by 8 pm every day. After all, this is Utah, and there are devoted mothers of babies on every other block. It’s probable none of those babies only thrive on human blood, but that’s just not a chance I’m willing to take.

I just hope my husband doesn’t mind sleeping with the lights on.