When you live in the woods at the end of a dead end street and both your roommates head out of state for the weekend while your parents (who usually live 10 minutes away) are now miles away at the ocean, clearly the smartest thing for you to do is watch a scary movie on HBO.  If your car wouldn’t start that day and your cell phone is out of battery, it’s an even better idea. Also, it’s a must for anyone who lives in a house that makes inexplicable noises, noises that normally make you think, “What is the cat getting into now?”  Except then you realize that the warm purring coming from right next to you is actually the cat, so what’s making that rustling sound upstairs, anyway?  And that clinking sound on the back porch window?

It’ll be fine, really.  Just walk through your house closing all your blinds, checking all the deadbolts, and turning on the outdoor floodlights.  Say to your cat, “We are in for the night, sister, get comfy.”  And then skulk back to the couch.

What’s that, you say? What if you get so freaked out you start convincing yourself it might be ok to “hold it” until morning because you can’t face walking past your own front door?  That’s fine, it’s character-building. If worse comes to worse, you’ve got a Christmas tree that needs watering.  Oh, yeah, your tree is artificial and only 3/4 of the way put together.  Well, life is full of struggle and like I said, this is character-building.

Not sure which scary movie to pick for your isolated evening alone?  I suggest something where the creepiness builds slowly, something you can start watching and think, “I see that bugs and murky water are pouring out of the toilet and that tentacles are coming through the wall to grab that pretty girl while her crazy, dead mother in a hospital gown peeks out from another stall in the public restroom…but that doesn’t scare me one bit.”  That way when the paralyzed nursing home resident crawls out of his wheelchair and his head turns totally upside down as he heads up the staircase on all fours after the old lady who seems to hold all the answers to the lead character’s haunting issues…you’ll be fine. You won’t be paralyzed with fear, ready to drop your contents all over your couch, writing a blog post just to stay sane.  You won’t be honestly considering watching The Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a way to scrub it all from your mind. 

No way! You’ll watch that movie and you’ll say, “Put on another! I am absolutely full of enough rational thought, inner strength, and intestinal fortitude to go through it all again! Small children taking on characteristics of the devil and stabbing innocent college girls don’t scare me one bit!”

Then you’ll search the comedy section of the free movies on demand, pick one where Paul Newman gets to play a cowboy, ponder why you didn’t pick this movie the first time around and how you might make it possible to go back in time and take Joanne Woodward’s place (except as a redhead and not a blonde), and make a nest on the couch because you’re still not ready to face walking by that front door.