"I've just had an apostrophe. Lightning...has just struck my brain" ~Smee

I love horror. And no, I don't mean horror like coming home to find my house on fire -- I mean the horror genre. Books, movies, campfire stories, you name it. Many people don't understand my adulation; they say to me "How can you watch that stuff? It gives me nightmares." The answer is that it gives me nightmares, too! That's part of the rush. Imagine yourself waking up from an incredibly realistic nightmare, shaking and sweaty, nervous that it might have been true... and then realizing that you have to pee more than anything in the world, but you're so scared to put your feet on the floor beside your bed that you'd rather wet the bed on purpose than make the 15-foot death walk. You can't buy that kind of adrenaline! It's like bungee jumping on heroin -- except cheaper and more intense. But the point of this rant is to inform you that, after 25 years, I think I've finally had my love of horror epiphanized to me.

It comes from ice cream. In the immortal words of Paul Simon, "When I was just a boy..."

...my father had a puzzle. In fact he still has it; I found it in his game room when I was there this last Thanksgiving. It is an ice cream puzzle. It simply has dozens of scoops of ice cream of different colors. To my knowledge, I am the only person who ever actually completed this puzzle, but that's an ice cream cone of a different color. The point is that the BACK of the puzzle had a poem, called "The Craving," which I loved so much that I memorized. Here is part of it (and you know this is still from my 25-year-old memory because I googled the poem and can't find it anywhere):

As I wandered, weak and weary

Through the summer heat so dreary,

I quite suddenly was stricken by a longing strong and pure.

Quick I recognized this craving,

This familiar inner raving:

It was ice cream, only ice cream, that my heart was longing for.

Just a single scoop of ice cream, this my heart was longing for.

Only this, and nothing more.

On my quest I went a-searching,

Through the city streets a-lurching,

'Til at last I saw before me golden words upon a door.

..... [forgot this line]

..... [forgot this line]

"Ice cream, ice cream evermore!" read the words upon the door.

..... [forgot this line]

Only this, and nothing more.

Hot and tired, parched and thirsting,

Through the door I came a-bursting,

For I needed no rehearsing as to what I'd come here for.

Just a cone was all I wanted,

But I suddenly was haunted

By more luscious ice cream flavors than I'd ever seen before

I was suddenly confronted by a monumental chore:

Choosing one, and nothing more.

...and the poem continues for many, many more stanzas, listing out all of the individual flavors and detailing the ultimate demise of our poor hapless friend. It wasn't until I was finished memorizing this work of art that my English-teaching mother informed me that it was not original: it was a spoof of a "real" poem by a man named Edgar. I read "The Raven" with some trepidation, and never looked back.

I voraciously ate up every single one of Poe's works. After him, it was only a very small leap from Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher to Bradbury's Usher II... and I was off again, exploring the repertoire of my new friend Ray. From Poe to Bradbury to King to Carpenter to Harris to Rice to Shyamalan... thus details my downward spiral.

And I owe it all to ice cream. Only this, and nothing more.