I was not always a popular child. Actually, I was not ever a popular child. I was a nerd, a teacher’s pet, and a brain. I was probably quite annoyingly precocious, I sucked at sport, and if all that social awkwardity (yes, I made this word up) were not enough; I also changed schools with alarming frequency. I changed schools twenty-two times in my twelve years of education.
(And no, neither of my parents were in the military – there is no standard reasoning for our frequent moving. I simply suspect that there is some gypsy blood cursing through my family’s veins. It explains why, every time I visit a town, I offer to read the fortunes of the townspeople – just before I steal their horses, curse their crops and impregnate their daughters.)
So I was a bit of a social outcast most of the time. But I didn’t know how to not suck at sport or be good at schoolwork; and so the situation was mostly out of my hands.
However, over the weekend I came across the mortifying realization that, at at least one point in my childhood, my suffering as a dorkish loser was entirely my own doing.
I came across this mortifying realization while coming across a different (and initially completely unrelated) mortifying realization altogether:
That Teen Wolf is not actually a horror film.
I honestly had no idea. I saw it when I was four years old, and it terrified me. I was so scared after seeing that horrible film I had nightmares for weeks. I became convinced that a vicious, furry and befanged Ale
x P Keaton was residing under my bed; and if any part of my foot so much as lightly grazed the carpet in my room, he would be able to grab me, yank me under the bed and devour me whole. As a result, whenever it was time to go to bed, I would start running from the end of the hall, so that I was sprinting at full tilt by the time I reached my doorway. I’d take a flying leap just before linoleum became carpet, and crash land in a pile of blankets and pillows on my bed, which I immediately buried myself under – heart hammering, shivering, and deathly afraid, but safe.
(This was probably the closest I ever came to actually being good at a sport – long jump. However, I was too busy being traumatized by the fact that A TIME TRAVELLING REPUBLICAN HELLHOUND WAS LIVING UNDER MY BED AND MUM DIDN’T EVEN CARE to notice this.)
So how does this affect my social standing at school, years later? I was nine years old, a fairly new student at this particular school (but let’s be honest – 22 schools in 12 years, I was perpetually a “fairly new student”); and kids were doing what kids do best: bragging.
What’s the biggest jump you’ve ever done on your BMX? TWO HUNDRED METRES!!
How long can you hold your breath? FIVE MINUTES!!
What’s the worst swear word you’ve ever said in front of a grown up? I SAID ‘BLOODY’ IN FRONT OF MY MUM AND SHE DIDN’T EVEN SMACK ME!
And so on. We got to the question “What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?” – and I knew this was my chance to make it with the cool kids. When they found out that I had seen the most petrifying story ever committed to celluloid AND SURVIVED, they would immediately accept me as one of their own.
I puffed out my scrawny, nine year old chest, looked my inquisitor confidently in the eye and said “Teen Wolf”.
Everyone laughed. They laughed like I had just given them the title of some kind of innocuous teen comedy as the ‘scariest movie ever’, and not the visual proof that Michael J Fox was an Agent of Satan. They laughed like they would never stop. They laughed like they had just met the most retarded child ever to set foot in the sleepy mining town of Mount Isa.
I never recovered from that social faux pas. I was the frightened weird kid for the rest of my days at that school (which is where we get to the upshot of changing schools 22 times in 12 years – I wasn’t there for long).
The thing is, I never actually stopped for a moment to consider that there was something wrong with my movie choice. I was still convinced that Teen Wolf was the zenith of horror cinema. I simply assumed I attended a school exclusively populated with the hardest, most fearless kids I had ever met. Every single one of those children clearly had tiny, undescended balls of steel.
But not me. To this day, I am anxious about werewolves. I am quite aware that werewolves don’t exist, but they still freak me out. Despite the woeful special effects, whenever Oz turned into a werewolf on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I would cringe. I haven’t yet watched Underworld. I’m not even comfortable looking at a photo of Taylor Lautner, because of my deep-set childhood trauma involving werewolves.
Well, this and the fact that he’s being touted as a sex symbol and he looks like he’s nine, but mostly the werewolf thing.
