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Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, October 28, 2008 The LIGHTER SIDE Dazed News Off The Beaten Path Slice of Life Being Scared James L. Davis The Halloween season is once again upon us, which means that at some point during the next week I can be counted upon to scream like a school girl and curse in several languages I was not even aware I knew. I will scream like a school girl and curse in foreign languages because I do not particularly like being scared, but invariably I will be sometime around Halloween. I always am. It is a curse I have brought upon myself after many years of delighting in scaring others on any given occasion. In the scheme of things there are basically two types of people: those who scare and those who are scared. Sometimes people fall into both categories. Take coal miners for instance. Walk up on a coal miner without his knowledge and jab him in the ribs and watch what happens. Nine times out of 10 the coal miner will scream and take a swing at you, not necessarily in that order. You don’t really even have to jab them in the ribs. Just say hi when they aren’t aware that you’re there and you get pretty much the same reaction. They are also just as likely to sneak up on the next guy and try the same thing you just scared them with. Of the two categories I spent most of my life in the former. I loved to scare people but did not like to be scared. Even today, after screaming like a school girl because my daughter was waiting right outside the bathroom door when I opened it and made me do what I had gone to the restroom to avoid doing in the first place, I will argue for long periods of time that I hadn’t been scared at all. I had merely been acting when I screamed and dropped to the floor to curl up in the fetal position. I did not used to be easy to scare. In fact, I used to be pretty much impossible to scare. That was because I was constantly looking for new and inventive ways to scare other people, so I could see a good scare coming. But somewhere along the line I became preoccupied and no longer looked for every occasion to jump out and scream like a banshee at some poor, helpless victim carrying a dozen eggs. I got lazy and because I got lazy I was cursed to have all of the scares I had given returned to me tenfold, which is probably immensely satisfying to my niece, who was the victim of one my greatest scares. Even today, 30 years later, she will look at me on occasion, furrow her brow and begin to hit me with whatever object is at hand while mumbling under her breath that she will teach me for scaring her like that. When I was in 15 or 16 years old I was at the height of my scaring abilities and could find inventive ways to scare my siblings, my parents, my neighbors, complete strangers and the family pets. It was something of an obsession. So it was that one afternoon I happened to be walking by the front window of our house and noticed that my niece was staring rather intently at the television. So much rapt attention just begged for interruption with a good scare, and I just so happened to be ready and willing to provide one. So I went to my bedroom, where I kept my favorite Halloween mask. It was an old man mask and with it pulled over my head it fit so snugly that at first glance you might just think you were looking at a particularly ugly old man in need of a good dermatologist. I had spent long hours developing a persona to go along with the mask that included a sliding limp and the habit of moaning and growling at the same time. I slipped the mask on, covered my body with a hammered overcoat and ran back outside. My niece is eight years or so younger than I am, making her the absolute perfect age to torment. So when I scraped my fingers across the window and saw her eyes diverted from the television to me I was laughing behind the old man mask as her eyes widened. Not content just to give her a slight scare, I pulled the window open and gave her a guttural growl for good measure. She responded by sliding back further and opening her eyes even wider. So, being a teenager with an easy victim to scare, I decided the thing to do was to climb through the window, which I did as her eyes widened to the point where I thought it might be possible for her eyeballs to actually pop out of their socket. Now inside the living room, I was not sure exactly how to end my scare attack, so I improvised. I had watched the Planet of the Apes earlier in the week and for some reason decided that jumping about the room like a wild ape would be the thing to do. I followed it up by jumping on the couch, biting my niece on the arm and then dashing back out the window. My niece was pretty much traumatized, and even today I believe is afraid of old men who act like crazed apes. My sister was not amused to discover that I had made her daughter afraid of old men who act like crazed apes but I did my best to defend my actions. “It was just some Halloween fun.” “It’s July, James.” Well, there was that. My sister then told me that some day I would regret always running around scaring people, which is why I try and stay hidden during Halloween. There’s nothing more frightening to a person that used to scare people than being scared by people. Except, maybe, old men who act like crazed apes. Dancers from the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company perform for students at Cottonwood Elementary. Photo by Kathy Ockey Students Learn the Art (and Work) of the Dance Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company presented their contemporary dance style to Castle Dale and Orangeville Elementary schools on Oct. 22. Gigi Arrington, education director for the company, said they receive funding to present these programs through the Utah State Office of Education and the Utah State Legislature. They reach every school district every three years and every school every 10 years. Ms Arrington introduced the dancers: Kane Kearson, Connecticut; Betsy Kelly, Alaska; Joe Blake, New Hampshire; Andrea Dispensca, Georgia; Lalea Brown, Hawaii; and TJ Spar, Alaska. She told the students that each one of the dancers had graduated from college to become dancers and that dancing is their job. She also told about their schedules, rehearsals and performances. She explained that dancing is a lot of work and about the importance of diet, rest, and taking care of their bodies so they are healthy enough to dance as much as they do. She explained their style of dancing is called improvisation and that it is different from other types of dancing. There are also four elements involved in improvisational dance: space, shape, time and energy, and the dancers displayed each one of these elements. News of the Weird Chuck Shepherd Lead Story Legendary banjo player Eddie Adcock, age 70 and suffering hand tremors that failed to respond to medication, volunteered for a revolutionary neurosurgery in August in which he finger-picked tunes while his brain was exposed, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center surgeons tried to locate the defective area. In “deep brain stimulation,” doctors find a poorly responding site and use electrodes to arouse it properly. As Adcock, conscious but pain-free, picked out melodies, doctors probed until suddenly Adcock’s playing became disjointed, and electrodes were assigned to that spot. By October, according to an ABC News report, Adcock, with a button-activated chest pacemaker wired to his head, was back on stage, as quickfingered as ever. Fat Is Good (1) Clair Robinson, 23, told an interviewer in September that she believes the only reason she survived the deadly flesh-eating infection recently was because she had too much weight for the bacteria to consume. “Being big saved my life,” she told Australia’s “Medical Emergency” TV show. (2) Though Mayra Rosales, 27, stands charged with capital murder in Hidalgo County, Texas, she was not ordered to jail pending trial but was allowed home detention because of her obesity. At about 1,000 pounds, Rosales requires special transportation and facilities and was ruled by a judge in August certainly to be no “flight risk.” The Duplex The Litigious Society -- Murderers in the Money: (1) Reggie Townsend, 29, serving 23 years in a Wisconsin prison for reckless homicide against an 11-yearold girl, won $295,000 from a jury in September as compensation for a two-month confinement with only a “wet, moldy and foul smelling” mattress to sleep on (about $4,900 per unpleasant night). (2) Muri Chilton (aka Murray Gartton), serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, was awarded $2,500 by a Canadian Federal Court judge in September as compensation solely for feeling “utterly humiliated” in 2000 when guards roared with laughter after he mangled his thumb in a prison workshop accident. -- Brian Hopkins, 25, severely burned in 2006 after climbing onto the roof of an empty train at Boston’s South Station at 2 a.m., filed a lawsuit in August against Amtrak. Though admitting that he was trespassing at the station when he was zapped by 27,500 volts of overhead wire, Hopkins said Amtrak ought to have known that people trespass and climb on top of trains, and therefore should have parked its train in a less-accessible place. Equal Rights for All -- Roy Hollander filed a civil rights lawsuit against Columbia University in New York City in August, claiming that its “women’s studies” curriculum teaches a religion-like philosophy that oppresses men by blaming them for nearly all social problems. (When interviewed by the New York Daily News, Hollander declined to give his age, saying such a revelation would crimp his pickup success with young women: Frequently, he said, women “think I’m younger than I am, so I don’t want to disillusion them.”) Ironies (1) In September, alleged flasher Patrick Dodenhoff, 39, fled after a report of indecent exposure, and police chased him from Atascadero, Calif., south to Pismo Beach, and finally caught up with and arrested him at a well-known local nude beach. (2) As urban Detroit continues its decline, with an estimated 5,000 residents fleeing annually, it is not just living people who leave. Dead bodies depart, as well, at a rate of 500 a year, according to an August Detroit News report, as relatives unwilling to travel to the crumbling city’s cemeteries have their loved ones disinterred and relocated. People Different From Us Christina Downs, 24, of Portsmouth, N.H., mounted a full-blown defense to the speeding ticket (44 mph in a 25 mph zone) she received in 2007 (even though the officer said Downs had arrogantly sped off again immediately afterward and had to be stopped a second time). Acting as her own lawyer, Downs filed motions and at a trial, put the officer through a meticulous, 96-point cross-examination about such matters as work schedule, training, engineering studies of road speeds, radar technology, weather conditions, traffic flow, and the use of a tuning fork to calibrate the radar device. The judge ruled against her, and in October 2008, the state Supreme Court ordered her to pay the $100 ticket. Least Competent People (1) A 38-year-old woman described as “very large,” using the “abductor” thightightening machine at the New York Sports Club in Harlem in July, failed to dismount properly, according to a witness, and was “sling-shot” off, across the room, startling other gym users. Paramedics had to use a “Stokes basket” instead of a regular stretcher to carry her out, according to the New York Post. (2) Also in July, in Kokomo, Ind., pastor Jeff Harlow attempted to illustrate a sermon on “unity” by riding a dirt bike onto the stage in front of the congregation at Crossroads Community Church. However, he lost control, fell off the stage and broke his wrist. Recurring Themes Food engineers in Japan, especially, are notorious for their odd-flavored ice creams that challenge the palate, as News of the Weird has noted several times. In August, voters at the Taste of Britain festival selected their own regional favorites, some of which rivaled Japan’s (e.g., ice creams of sausage and mash, pork pie, cheddar cheese, Worcestershire sauce, Welsh rarebit and even haggis). The Japanese still love their ice cream, though. Among the flavors at this year’s Yokohama Ice Cream Expo in August (celebrating the 130th anniversary of ice cream in Japan) were beef tongue, octopus, eel and beer. (Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.) By Glenn McCoy |