When I was a very young girl, sometime in the early 80s, probably around '83-'84, there was a movie on television, and the only part I remember is showing a woman, very calmly, putting a pillow over the face of a small, crying child. Eventually, the child stopped crying. I didn’t quite understand what had just happened, so I turned to my mother and I asked her if putting a pillow over a crying kid’s face was a good way to make them stop crying. My mother gently explained to me that the mother in the movie was a bad, bad person, and that she had just suffocated her child. I didn’t quite know what “suffocated” meant, and asked my mother… and she told me the child was dead. I was horrified. Horrified. I remember being scared to death of being a bad child from that point on, and that I should never, ever cry for a very long time, and if I did cry, I should cry quietly, because strangers - babysitters, daycare workers, policemen! - would suffocate me for being too loud and annoying. I didn’t for a moment believe my own mother would do it - she said the mother in the movie was bad, and my mother wasn’t bad. But apparently everybody else in the world could be…
When I was about three years old, my parents once called my into the living room from wherever I’d been playing and told me to watch something they thought I would love on the television. It was some variety program, or possibly even a news show, and they showed a real cat on a little surfboard. The cat sat contentedly on the little surfboard, riding along on the gentle waves. Thinking about it today, they must have been slowly towing the cat along off camera, because he was cruising pretty good without any real waves or anything. The song they played in the background was that godawful “Sailing” by… who? Christopher Cross? Ugh.
Anyway, naturally, my parents thought I would love this. I loved cats, and hey look, there was a cat, and he was doing something neat! Nut uh. No way. I saw that cat and burst into uncontrollable tears. My parents couldn’t understand why. But I know why. I kept thinking that cats couldn’t swim/hated water, and since I couldn’t see any boats in the shot, I thought the cat was stranded forever and ever. I thought this was a cruel fate for the poor kitty, and I was mad at the people who put him out there. I ran screaming to my bedroom and cried my heart out for that damn cat. And for years, years afterward, anytime that stupid song “Sailing” came on the radio, the tears started afresh, and I mourned for that poor cat, stranded out there on the ocean somewhere on a surfboard.
As for truly disturbing, well, that just happened about an hour ago. I’ve heard people mention again and again, one of the most famous scenes or most-showed footage on television is the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. Well, I’d never even seen the original footage. I thought it must be grainy and bad, so you wouldn’t really see anything. I looked up the Zapruder film. Honest to god, never seen any of this shit before in my life. It shocked me to instant sobs. And Jackie… I feel terrible. I can’t seem to find anything to comfort me; my familiar routine and music just feels off today. I wish I’d never seen it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight. I’m not scared… but I feel deeply disturbed.
