i have seen too many scary movie trailers

i don't see scary movies. why? well one, i hate being scared. two, those things stay with me for days. and by that i mean i will be scared to enter my house at night, dark shadows will seemingly team with evil making me afraid of any noise, and let's not even talk about taking a shower at night. i was the kid who would sleep with their lights on and still be a little scared. so i know better than to subject myself to the horror genre.

hollywood, however, is not being supportive. i have had to watch several trailers now, while innocently waiting for my movie to start, that have made me jump out of my skin.

and yet it seems to me that basic common sense could stop this genre from even existing. i mean hello, when certain evil things happen you make a smart choice to get the hell out.

let me give you some examples.

1. when the numbers to the upper floors are burned off the elevator buttons, DON'T GO UP THERE. even better: move out of that building. what are you waiting for?

2. when the hotel you've been hired to caretake over the winter has a maze made out of hedges, forget your signed contract: don't take that job. go back to the city. what are you waiting for?

3. when no one lives upstairs yet, the upstairs is inexplicably flooding and the gathering water is creating a "crying" ceiling in your apartment, get the hell out of there. what are you waiting for? do not think for one second that you should grab a flashlight to "check things out." instead check this out: your suitcases. there they are. pack them. now go.

i bring all this up because this afternoon i had made myself a delicious cup of tea, still steaming hot. and i had purchased one delectable lip-lickable palmier (my current favorite cookie; so inexplicably delicious it deserves its own blog post). the only problem with the palmier (not that it was a "problem"; there is nothing problematic with the palmier) was that it was a little flaky and i had to take each bite right over the plate, leaning over the table as one will do.

so i leaned over and sunk my teeth into the layers of the puff pastry, caramelized sugar and butter and as i sat back up i felt it.

a drop of water. a drop of water fell and hit my arm. and not just any drop of water -- it was warm. a warm drop of water FELL FROM THE CEILING and hit my arm.

i looked up, peering at my ceiling for that tell-tale dark stain of gathering water. i squinted my eyes to get a better look.

just the day before i had found a piece of plaster on my chair and had noticed that part of the plaster was peeling away from the pitch of the ceiling and the long, exposed beam that runs the length of my building.

i started to put it together. plaster falling off. warm water falling from above.

obviously my apartment was in the inner throes of some sort of evil poltergeistian takeover. there was only one answer: i would have to move. what was i waiting for? i would have to pack right away. who should i call? and i was slightly amazed: who knew that this stuff actually happened in real life? meanwhile, the place on my arm, hit with the hot tears of the ceiling, had a new sense of limb-self-consciousness, as if that spot had a new body awareness -- i seemed to specifically feel each centimeter of its skin coverage.

i looked up again. surely there was some explanation.

and that's when i thought to touch my hair. a little strand that must have taken a quick and unnoticed dive into my hot tea when i bent over the table to eat the delicious palmier. and my hair was indeed warm and wet to the touch. and it hung right over that spot on my arm.

and this, my friends, this is why i cannot go to see scary movies.