Tune the Radio to AM

Scary movies. That's what I thought I would be doing tonight as I waited for my boys to come home from their various Halloween activities. But I can't bring myself to even open any movie apps to search one out. Real life is too scary at the moment. I texted my mama this morning at 10 AM. No reply. "She must just be sleeping in since she hasn't been feeling well." I told myself. I sent another text at 11 AM. No reply. I called my Step-father. He said she'd not had a good night and that she was resting on the couch but not very responsive. Dave and I drove right over to their house. She hardly acknowledged that we were there. We called her doctor and he said if we could get her to the car and over to the hospital he would call ahead and let them know we were on our way, otherwise he could send an ambulance. We managed and made the five minute drive to the ER.

If you are of a certain age, you will remember a small appliance that sat on your night-stand called a "clock-radio". If you were lucky, it would also work as an alarm and could play both AM and FM stations. And if you were super lucky, you didn't have to share a room and therefore have to share what would be playing on your radio. Sometime after my sister had left home and gotten married, I got my own bedroom and therefore my own clock-radio. Hot summer nights in Arizona, I'd fall asleep with the moon shining through my blue sheer lace curtains, listening to a soft rock FM. Every now and then my bedroom door would creak open and my mother would quietly walk over to my night-stand. Not to turn my radio off....but to change it over to the crackle of the AM, and then slowly turn the dial until it arrived at the station she was seeking. "CBS Radio Mystery Theater" Hosted by E.G. Marshall.

Mama would gently nudge my shoulder and whisper to me that I should wake up and listen to Mystery Theater. If memory serves, I think it was around 11 PM. It was old-time radio, with actors and actresses and sound effects, the clip-clop of horses hooves, the creaking of doors, and the creepiest of music as the introduction to each show. I would lie in bed and keep my eyes closed, yet now just on the edge of both wakefulness and sleepy and listen to the stories. They were never scary but more mysterious. After the show would end I'd turn off my radio and fall right back to sleep.

When the "CBS Late Movie" came on TV in the late 1970's and early '80's, she and I would often sit up late at night together and watch a good scary one; each of us alternately convincing the other to not bail on it because it was too scary to finish.

The summer after I had a bad break-up with a boy-friend, she and I went to lots of matinee movies together. "Psycho 3" was a fun one. Others we watched that summer on TV, old black and whites, "The Bad Seed", "Village of the Damned", "The Birds". For at least two hours that day I would forget my heart was broken and get lost in the dilemma of a woman being chased by flocks of birds, or the woes of an entire village of people whose children were all platinum-haired, glowy-eyed, telepathic (brats) intent on destruction. It was all so gloriously far-fetched and perfectly distracting.

I still enjoy a well-made thriller/mystery. Movies with evil under/over-tones I can do without. There's enough real evil in the world I don't find I can be entertained by the portrayal of it. 2020 has been a bit of a scary movie come to life in many ways. I'm ready for a different theme. Last month Mama asked me to take her to see the movie "Infidel". I never did. The theaters have so many restrictions and we haven't been back since everything shut down. The movie isn't in the theater anymore. I haven't seen it on any of my Apps yet.

So tonight as I type, I watch the clock on my laptop fall back for Daylight Savings. I don't want to watch a scary movie. I don't want to watch any movie. I want to go into my mother's hospital room with a little clock radio and turn the dial to the AM station. Turn the dial until it tunes into..........E.G. Marshall's voice...."Welcome." A stopped horn sting and timpani roll, then: "I'm E. G. Marshall" … and then ending with "Inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for another adventure in the macabre". She would love that.