Get in on the John

I just got back from seeing the movie The Descent at the theater, and I've got to say it was pretty fantastically scary.

I liked it a lot, but then I am pretty immune to gore, which I can take or leave most of the time, and gore seemed to be the main selling point of the movie if the trailers and reviews can be believed, however, there is much more going for this movie than mere internal organs and thick pools of blood.



First of all, it is genuinely frightening; the scares never feel cheap or predictable, and you can really feel the walls closing in on you as you watch them get trapped in the cave with danger lurking in the darkness. And I enjoyed the all female cast, mostly because I am tired of the stereotypical horror movie chick who would rather scream shrilly and run away. The chicks in this movie are not some females you would want to mess with. Even Arnold looks kind of wimpy, compared. Awesome. There was only one Y chromosome representative in the entire film and he was only on there for like a minute.

The surprise ending

The Descent (aka Six Chicks versus Gollum) was so immersive that when I left the theater I felt that, like the girls in the movie, I had to get out of the darkness and back to familiarity, and fast.

So I jumped into the truck that my grandparents let me borrow, popped it into reverse, looked over my shoulder for a space in the stream of cars leaving the parking lot, saw one, turned my wheel, and stepped on the gas. And hit an adjacent car with my front fender.

All I felt was a little bump, so I just sat there staring at the front of the truck. The notion that I could just keep on backing up, burn some rubber, and get out of there stole across my mind. I didn't really hit that car, did I? But I had to check, so I put it in drive, pulled back into the parking space, and got out.

There were some people hanging out, leaning against the hood of their cars and I asked them if I had really just hit him. They said "Yeah," there was some scratching and some denting, and I walked to the other side of the truck and saw that it was true. Holy crap.

And I thought the movie was scary.

I asked the lounging bystanders what I was supposed to do, I had never been in this situation before, and they told me to leave a note with my name and number on the car. I asked them if they had a pen I could borrow. While the overweight yet stylishly garbed woman searched her boyfriend's car for a pen, I ruffled my pockets for something to write on, eventually finding a receipt and tearing it in two.

My hands shook pretty badly as I slapped the receipt onto the car's windshield and began to write "I am sorry I scratched your car". I was barely able to get the note under the wiper, my hands were shaking so bad.

I gave the pen back to the couple and thanked them for it, and the guy told me to "Have a good one", followed by a nervous chuckle. I chuckled nervously with him and agreed that I would.

The need to get out of there, away from it, was still pretty strong, and I got home as fast as I could, leaping out of the truck, rushing to the phone, and calling my grandma's cell about a thousand times. No answer.

What if the guy called before my grandparents came home? What would I say to him? Just: "Um, I am terribly sorry I hit your car, sir"? Would I have to pay for it? Would insurance cover that sort of thing? Do I have insurance? Doesn't this kind of thing cost a ton to repair? Would he demand payment in blood? My first born child, maybe?

All these things rushed around inside my head (and were seriously considered, for a moment at least), and I couldn't handle the thought of dealing with his call, so I took the phone off the hook and paced around the house waiting for my grandparents to come home and tell me what I was supposed to do.

So they just came home, and they said "Hi we're home!", and I said "I hit someone with the truck!", and they were remarkably calm about the whole thing. When you are in a panic, seeing people be placidly calm seems very wrong to you.

But apparently we do have insurance, and the guy will probably have to have the damage assessed before he will be able to call us, so the earliest he can call will be in two days, on Monday, and since grandpa is the one who is on the insurance, he might just handle the whole thing himself, and I won't have to talk to the guy whose car I ruined. Whew.

So I am in less of a panic now. Grandpa told me that he wasn't going to lose any sleep over the whole thing, and I told him that I probably would.


Well, that is the story of my first automotive mishap, it has been fun (not), and hopefully it will be my last.

Oh, and The Descent will probably be remembered as the scariest movie I have ever seen, once the memory of my "brush with death" begins to blur with my memory of the film. Which earns The Descent a rating of (where are my stars) four out of five!

(there are my stars.)