E.T. The Friday Flashback

I’ve already posted today, I know, but when I saw what today’s Friday Flashback topic was, I leapt onto the keyboard to pound this baby out. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) And, let’s face it, I’m a pint and a half up right now, so writing embarassing things about my childhood is exceptionally appealing at this particular moment. Also, note to self: the next time you think a half-pint is a good idea, consider the fact that it costs $4.00 while a full pint is only $5.40. GO FOR THE FULL PINT.

Ahem.

Tracey so eloquently wrote on her Friday Flashback post today:

So what was your first movie experience, and did by any chance give you evil skeleton-based nightmares that left you emotionally and psychologically hobbled for years? No? Just me? Really? Huh.

I’ve written before about my traumatic childhood experience of watching E.T. at the movies when I was four years old. But that was before I knew many of you and before many of you ever read anything on this website, so I thought you might get a wee kick out of my telling of the tale. To quote myself:

I’ve still never seen the entire film. It used to freak me out to have Entertainment Tonight on television because they would say “E.T.” so often, referring to themselves. I had nightmares about it for years and E.T. still makes the odd appearance in dreams I have, although they’re not usually frightening anymore. I think I’m afraid to watch it more because I’m afraid of having nightmares again. As a kid my imagination would totally get the better of me, and I’d imagine E.T. sitting in the corner of the basement or my closet or any room that was dark that I was going into. It was awful!

My Uncle Albert took me to see E.T. at a movie theatre (that’s how we Canadians spell it) in downtown Oshawa when I was just Little Ame. I was really uncertain about going, but you see, I loved my Uncle Albert more than any child should love her uncle, and I trusted him, and wanted to spend some time with him, so I went. I can still imagine standing on a stool in our kitchen on Kildeer Street, holding that peach-coloured phone earpiece to my ear and talking to him. The phone was a rotary dial phone mounted to the wall. It’s bizarre how we remember some details like that, isn’t it?

Albert took me to see the movie and within the first forty seconds I was freaked out. I must have had some sort of fit, because he took me out of the theatre into the lobby, that horrible early eighties movie theatre lobby, where we watched bits of the film through the window in the theatre doors. My uncle said to one of the theatre staff members at one point, “She’s gettin’ into it, now!” It was a train wreck and I wanted to look away but I was interested, too. Note to parents: DON”T ASSUME YOUR KIDS WILL LIKE MOVIES ABOUT SEMI-LOVABLE ALIENS.

I had nightmares about E.T. for YEARS and if you think I’m exagerrating, you can ask my husband if I’ve ever had dreams about E.T. since we’ve been married. That’s right, folks. E.T. still appears in my dreams, 25 years later, although I must admit that his (her? its?) appearance is much more ambiguous in nature than it was when I was a child. Sometimes in my dreams E.T. is really small, like a raccoon, and there are dozens of them running around the yard (not at all related to the overpopulation of rabbits in my neighbourhood?), and sometimes E.T.’s head appears where a normal human head should. Think I should lay off the rich foods before bed? Once we had a Hallowe’en party at our house and of course the kid next door came as E.T. and I had to avoid looking at this poor child the whole time (sorry about that, Michael Bryant!).

Did I really just type that?

Moving on…unfortunately you won’t see me embedding a scene from the movie in this post because that would mean I’d have to search You Tube for a clip and that would mean that E.T. would appear here in visual form in my blog which means I COULD NEVER LOOK AT MY BLOG AGAIN.

Instead, I bring you the next best thing.

I need another pint. Pronto.

Other participants of this week’s Friday Flashback are:

Sweetney
Mamalogues (who also mentioned E.T. in her post!)
Oh, The Joys
Mrs. Flinger
IzzyMom
Schmutzie

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