Me and my big imagination

Last night was my brother's birthday party. He and several (that is, four, but five teenage boys are like an infuriated cat; actually number and perceived number may differ greatly) of his friends were going to see a movie and then do the pizza thing. I was not entirely sure I wanted to come (How scary is I am Legend? and How many boys of 15 or 16 years of age?), but dad didn't really know anything about he movie, and there didn't seem to be any provision for me to have supper if I didn't come along, so I came.
I think that if we'd gotten there earlier and I'd had a chance to a) talk to my mother b) realize that she wasn't planning on watching the movie with us and c) grill her on the results of her is-this-suitable-to-send-my-son-to research, I might have decided to join her in hanging out at the mall and knitting while the boys and dad watched the movie, but my NoIdon'twanttodothis reflex generally needs a bit more time to warm up and consider pros and cons and such than the 30 seconds that it got. So I watched the movie.

I enjoyed it? Maybe. I don't know. What I do know is that it was not a movie that I want to see on the 7:00 showing (7:00 is far too close to bedtime for comfort. Ace would have liked it; there were lots of explosions. I myself would have appreciated the explosions more if they had been a) less structually damaging to the house and b) more effective in keeping off the ravening hordes of sub-human-infected-darkseeker-things. (Because today is clearly a good day for demarcating everything in lists. As long as I don't imitate Mr. Botherit and go a) and then 2), I'm probably okay.) I also might have appreciated it more if there had been less intentional buildup of the dramatic tension (yes, I know that something Bad and Startling is going to happen; that's been very clear for the past seven minutes, and it's almost certainly going to involve screaming, loud noises, and gunshots; can we please get on with it? And maybe cut down a bit on the loud noises?)

You have to understand that I'm not a scary movie sort of person (or even an adventure-movie-with-orchestrated-terrifying-bits sort of person). I have a very good imagination. And sometimes it gets . . . excited. By a number of things, among which is movies with scary bits late at night. I wholeheartly approve of the prudence which reserved "Blink" for 1:00 on a sunny Sunday afternoon. (I hope you're following this, kadharonon. I expect that it's the closest that you and prudence will ever get to being the the same sentence uttered by me (or, y'know, the typing equivalent). Certainly in the forseeable future.) I just don't do the scary movie thing (and yes, I know, I am Legend is probably not a terribly scary movie by most people's standards, but we aren't talking about most people's standards; we're talking about my standards).

I got to sleep just fine - the first time. And then I woke up. Not from a nightmare, mind you. (I don't do nightmares, either; it's been a really long time since I had any.) I was just awake. And it was cold outside my little nest of blankets on the floor. And my imagination said, "Oh, look! You're Awake! And look, it's Dark! And Cold! Let's think about Things. Specifically, let's think about that movie you so injudiciously watched close to bedtime! Let's think of all the scariest bits of it, and lets imagine how they could have been scarier! And even though you know that it was just a movie, you're still close enough to being asleep that you're Not Going To Be Able to convince us to think about anything else! Nice try thinking about the Greater Evil performing blood sarcrifice of all the main characters dream you had the other week, even if it did have Plot, but that dream didn't scare you, particularly since the Greater Evil was careless enough to not kill them entirely and then leave them alone, forgetting that one of them was a Really Powerful Healer so everything turned out OK! So we're not going to think about that dream. We're going to think about the scary bits of the movie! And then make them scarier, remember?!"
We've established the activeness of my imagination, haven't we? Good.
It's difficult at any point to leave the coziness of my blankets and move the nine whole feet to the light switch, and my hyperactive gerbil of an imagination didn't help any. But I did manage, eventually, and fed my imagination book until my eyes wouldn't focus any more. And then it was sated enough to not think about things until I fell asleep again. But I did not get enough sleep last night. And my fingers are cold. Again. Still.