8.  Lights Out--No, Wait! Keep Them On!
    by Bob Wallace
    bob.wallace{at}att.net

Exclusive to TLE

Yes, it's true. I was once a little kid, in body and mind. Now, I'm
physically an adult but inwardly, like many a child, still have the urge to
smack irritating people in the keester with a projectile, preferably from a
slingshot. A stinging pebble for the averge jerk, but for politicians and
busybodies who can't keep their noses out of other people's business, an
80-mph cue ball.

But years ago, when I was half as tall as I am now, and about one-quarter
the weight, I had, in addition to a slingshot (and a pellet/BB/dart gun),
about twice as much imagination as I do now. It was a great thing, but not
always such a good thing. I not only slept with the night-light always on,
but also, turtle-like, pulled the blanket completely over my head, because,
as all kids instinctively know, being hidden under a blanket is complete
protection against all monsters conceivable and inconceivable, no matter
from what wacked-out dimension or time or space they appeared. It was even
protection against the ones that a) lived under the bed b) in the closet or
c) very sneakily and toothily disguised themselves as clothes lying on a
chair (which was really really not a fair thing for them
to do!).

Even today I sleep curled into a blob, with the blanket completely over me.
Actually I use three blankets. An Intergalactic Death Ray couldn't get
through three. Better safe than sorry, I say. I've grown out of using
night-lights, although I keep a big flashlight by the bed to disintegrate
monsters. I still keep the closet door closed, and there are most
definitely no chairs in the bedroom! I used to throw my clothes on the
floor, until I realized they were moving around at night, creeping closer
and closer to me ("Hee hee hee. We're gonna get you, mister.").
Forget that.

This overactive imagination of mine, which today gives me heart
palpatations even though I mostly have control over it, was something that
ran my life when I was a kid. I saw monsters standing in my bedroom door,
and driving a '64 Ford Galaxy 500. I once thought I saw a girl with two
heads (she had a little head and two great big ponytails).

Movies? I used to go ballastic in the theater during horror films
("Where's his head?! It's not on his body!").
The worst, however, were radio programs. The reason? Imagining something is
worse than actually seeing it. In real-time, you might say, "Yeah, a
ten-foot-tall monster. I can deal with that." But in your imagination,
you might think, "Gee, maybe he's a thousand feet
tall!"

When I was about eight, and had an imagination that weighed more than I
did, I lived in an ancient two-story farmhouse that looked like something
Mortica and Gomez might have inhabited. The driveway was horseshoe-shaped
(I imagined from the air it looked like a giant's tongue), with our house
at the inside bottom of the U. There were a lot of old, large, gnarly
trees, which of course turned into monsters at night, with the branches
reaching out for me like claws (everyone else remembers the flying monkeys
in The Wizard of Oz; I remember those cranky talking
trees).

One night, after my parents parked their VW Bug, we didn't get out. They
wanted to finish listening to a radio program on their tinny little
one-speaker AM radio (back in those days car radios had punch buttons and
little knobs you twiddled). I was in the back seat. I don't remember if my
sister was in the car. She probably wasn't, because if she had been she
would have knocked me over and kicked out the back window trying to escape.
She was even worse than me when it came to imagining monsters, and still
tells me when she was four she often saw a guy with a handlebar mustache
and a knife walking down the hall toward her room. Even today she still
doesn't like mustaches. And all her knives are butter knives.

The program my parents were listening to I will never forget. I can't,
since I spent years searching for it, and now own a tape of Arch Oboler's
"The Dark," which was an episode of the often eerie, but
unfortunately long gone, Lights Out.

I had no idea what to expect sitting that night in the back seat of my
parents' car, with the trees going BWAHAHAHA! and waving around while
waiting for me to get out. I certainly didn't expect a radio program about
two guys walking into a farmhouse out in the country, just like the one in
which I lived. And probably with great big sinister trees.
And--brrr!--at night.

Their walking into the farmhouse wasn't the bad part. That was what they
encountered in the farmhouse--a slimy shadow that jumped on them like one
of those big spiders in Eight-Legged Freaks-- and turned
them inside out! And outside in! The special effects were the lolapalooza
that sent me over the edge--they consisted of a horrible, sucking, slurping
sound that I later found out was a wet rubber glove slowly being turned
inside out. Slurrrrrpppp. It was the imaginative
equivalent of a firecracker going off inside of the car.

Boy, I'll bet Oboler cackled for years over that program! I know I would
have. Who would have thought it possible--creating one of the biggest
frights ever on radio with a rubber glove.

And of course our two unfortunates were yelling, "Shadow! Slimy
shadow! Get off of me! Quit turning me inside out! Ouch!"
Slurrrpppp. And then they were trying to talk with their
outsides on their insides, and vice versa. "Mmmph! Mmmph! Mmmph!"

I had had enough. I was twitching. My brains were hyperventilating. It felt
like my brains were going to turn inside out. Yikes!
Then I would have had my brains on the outside of my head, like the mutant
lobster-people in This Island Earth! I felt like my eyes
were going to pop out of their sockets--arrghh! Like Ray Milland in
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes! Ack! Gack! Enough!

I did not want to listen to this program anymore! I had
this vivid image of these two guys staggering around, with all their organs
on the outside (how did they see?). And why didn't they
just run before this thing latched onto them? Later I thought they must
have been the fathers of those stupid teenagers in horror films who go
upstairs and open the closet door when they know perfectly well there's a
knife-wielding, hockey-mask-wearing, teenager-killing maniac loose in the
house!

I was within seconds of losing control and yelling, "Turn it
off!" when God took pity on me and ended the program. I
guess even today those two poor guys are wandering around someplace, still
turned inside out and going, "Mmmph! Mmmph! Mmmph!" And
that is why I keep the closet door shut at night.

Occasionally I grin my evil grin and play that tape for innocent little
kids. Every one of them does the same thing: their eyes bug out, they wave
their hands at the radio, and they yell, "I don't want to
listen anymore!" Ha ha! I was braver than I thought when I
was little! At least I listened to the whole thing!

"The Dark" is not the only tape I own. I own some episodes of
Quiet, Please and Suspense. Actually,
I don't own them anymore, since they're on available on CD and I'm buying
them. I sent the tapes to a fiend--uh, I mean friend--who said when he was
little he would huddle under a blanket with a flashlight and read science
fiction or else listen to radio programs (See? Blankets really
are protection against everything.).

I sent the tapes to him in a big cardbox box. Why put three tapes into a
big box, you might ask? Because I had to have room for the flashlight and
blanket I sent him! I figured he'd need all the ammo he can use when he
listens to "My Son John" and "Shadow of the Wings,"
which are stories about a father who brings his son back from the dead, and
a sick little girl who sees something outside her window...something whose
wings cast a shadow on her floor. At least I didn't send him probably the
creepiest Lights Outs: "The Thing on the Fourble
Board."

Ah...and some of the other tapes I own! Boris Karloff as a guy who bricks
his wife up in a wall (but why then does she keep talking?) Edgar G.
Robinson as a guy who's dead, but really ain't. There's one with some
unknown actor who plays a catatonic who almost gets embalmed (more
creepy-crawly special-effects: the embalming machine going SHOOKA SHOOKA
SHOOKA.). It's all wonderful stuff, even if a bit unnerving at times.

Imagination is underrated. Albert Einstein understood its importance when
he said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." He
didn't say knowledge wasn't important, but meant without imagination you
can't use the knowledge properly. If Einstein hadn't had such an active
imagination he would not have been able to see in his mind's eye what it
was like to ride a light beam, and the world would have waited a lot longer
for his discoveries.

Imagination is an inherent part of creativity. It is what I call a Thing
Beyond All Doubt (which is not related to any of H.P. Lovecraft's Things
Beyond All Belief). If we want more inventions--and best of all, more
fun--we need more imaginative and creative people, even
if they are a little goofy and eccentric and maybe even hide under blankets
at night. And the imagination is like a muscle; it has to be exercised.It's
not going to kill an adult to go oof oof over a book every once in a while.
Kids don't even have to go oof--for them it's easy.

Many people today moan and groan and whine and get their shorts all twisted
up about the sorry state of our schools. Paying teachers more is the
answer, they say. Or standardized testing. Or more computers in the
classroom. Or smaller classes. Or whatever.

Yet, in many schools, if children show any active interest in using their
imaginations, a lot of people throw fits. Look how many goofuses don't want
kids reading the Harry Potter books. I've read them;
they're harmless. Some aren't even that good. What's next? C.S. Lewis and
the Narnia books getting banned? Uh, what? They already
are?

Just exactly how do these busybodies believe children are going to exercise
and develop their imaginations? I never see it
discussed. Just about the only thing I hear is "More money" and
"More federal control." Oh, yeah, just great. A bunch of
bureaucratic dweebs running the schools. I'd rather deal with Gollum than a
bunch of bureaucrats. Actually, I'd rather sic Gollum on
bureaucrats ("Hey, what is that thing?"  "Me? Gollum. You?
Snack!"Crunch.).

A lot of times, the child who is imaginative is the nail that gets hammered
down. Dav Pilkey, author of the best-selling Captain
Underpants books (which sometimes get banned), spent most of his
school days sitting in the hallway writing and drawing. His teachers told
him he'd never amount to anything (and boy did he get some good revenge!
His principal is now a character in his books, one who runs around in his
tighty-whities thinking he's a superhero.).

School was boring when I was a kid, and it's even more boring now. I
perfected the nifty little trick of falling asleep while sitting up, with a
book propped open in front of me (I think the title was, "ABANDON HOPE
ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE"). I never fell out of the chair, not once.

Fairy tales and fables, which have been around since who-knows-when, aren't
taught in school, even though it's how people educated children for
thousands of years. They weren't even taught in school when I was little.
We had Dick and Jane and Pony and Spot, all of whom I thought were the
spawn of Satan trying to suck the brains out of my six-year-old head and
replace them with the twin demons of Boredom and Hyperactivity. Good thing
Ritalin (which is Luciferian for "You're All Doomed") didn't
exist back then; class clown that I was, it would have been shoved in me by
the tablespoon.

Anyone who knows anything about children knows all of them like to be read
stories, and they don't want to be read stories about recycling and some
fake hole in the ozone layer! Even adults like stories, which is why
Stephen King is so popular, and why I listen to those scary tapes.

Some adults, who remind me of the Byrds' song "My Back Pages"
("I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now") know that
in some ways kids are a bit wiser than adults. G.K. Chesterton, in
The Ethics of Elfland wrote this: "When the
business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some
such speech as this: 'Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in
the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break
up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to
using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.' Thus,
at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves
used to talk to me when I was a boy.  But since then I have grown up and
have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies."

Bah--close the public schools down. Turn the lousiest teachers inside out
and let them wander the countryside going "Mmmpph! Mmmpph!
Mmmpph!" Read kids fairy tales and fables and myths. Let them read
what appeals to them, even if they're comic books (I
dare>/i> you to say something bad about Superman!). And if
some of the stuff scares them, hey, so what? I actually kinda liked being
scared in the back of that car, even if I nearly had a brain infarct.
Everything seemed a little more real, more vivid. I remember very little
from school, but I certainly remember that ding-dang frizzen-fruppen slimy
shadow!

So, children, gather around the campfire, and for the next hour, sit
quietly...you are about to the experience the awe and mystery...as you
boldly go...Okay, I know I mixing my quotes, not to mention splitting my
infinitives, but if you can guess what two programs those quotes are from,
you get a gold star, one that you most definitely deserve. It shows you
have imagination.

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