thirty years ago

41

I wrote this last night.

30 years ago today, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness was released.

That means that 30 years ago tnight, I was at the AMC 10 in Burbank.

Today, that part of Burbank is filled with businesses and chain restaurants and street performers. 30 years ago, there was the theater, a parking garage, a Fuddrucker’s that’s still there and still terrible, and not much else. It was quiet when you went outside, especially after a movie that started late.

We went to a show that started around 10 or 1030pm. The air was cool that night and it was so foggy, we couldn’t see the streetlights, just their glow. I went with three of my friends, who were all older than me and could drive us. We listened to Van Halen in the car.

I remember that the movie wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and I was disappointed. It wasn’t scary, and the effects seemed cheesy. I wanted it to scare me the way The Thing scared me, and it didn't do that.

But it was foggy as hell that night, which is something that doesn’t happen in Burbank very often, and that made the post-showing silence especially eerie, and worth the drive.

On the way home, we went on streets instead of the freeway, because it would take us longer to get home that way, and that’s what being out at night with your friends is about when you’re fifteen.

Tonight, it’s hot and dry outside, and I am in the home I own. I drove my Mini today and listened to Depeche Mode. My wife is asleep in our bed. Our son is asleep in our guest room. I feel like that teenager I was thirty years ago isn't even a real person, just a memory that's painful to visit more often than not.

A lot of my teens blurs together, because I worked all the time and I was so unhappy, I spent my twenties trying to forget them. But this is one of the things that I can remember pretty clearly, because of the fog.

In literary symbolism, we use fog to represent mystery, the inability to see clearly, and uncertainty. It's interesting to me that the fog is the only reason I can remember anything about that night, thirty years ago.

Time is weird. Memory is weird. Life is strange.

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sid:
Sometimes, days like that remind me of the days my dad and I were close, and before he passed away...  When he used to take me to Boston and there was a huge Warner Brothers store filled with Marvin the Martian merchandise and his spaceship you could climb into and play with the controls, but all they really did was color in a photo via computer, which was then printed out...  That area has been turned into a food court and a big Barnes and Nobel, and when I worked in that mall when I was in college, I'd ride the subway to the stop under the mall, walk up the stairs, get my Starbucks from B&N because they were free as long as I worked at the store I worked at (Game Stop)... we got huge discounts in a bunch of places back then.  Anyway, as I picked up my iced coffee, I would die a little inside because I knew that it used to be a place of joy for me and my father as a child.  Those days also remind me of when my dad would let me skip school on my birthday, and would take me to The Roger Williams Park Zoo back in my hometown in Rhode Island.  The park around it was beautiful, and contained structures made of Roman-like architecture, and there was this tree that we always sat on with a branch that was low to the ground and drank Del's Lemonade after being at the zoo...  I believe they have cut the branch off the tree not too long ago as to not encourage kids to climb it, and I doubt I'd recognize it or the zoo anymore.  They used to let the Lemurs out on nice days, and they'd just sit on a fence where the keepers watched them, and encouraged us to pet them since they were hand-raised.  I remember feeding one.  I doubt they do that anymore.  I haven't been back "home" in like 5 years, and that was when I wasn't as sick as I am now...  I just feel like, even though my family lives there, I have no ties there anymore.  My dad's gone, my mom coddles my older sister, and I feel like a stranger there now...
diddy_dave_uk:
@sid {{{{{{hug}}}}}

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