Why I like horror movies

When I was a child, I used to get in a lot of fights. As a fresh-faced five year old on my first day of school, I was almost expelled for fighting with another boy. I left a permanent scar on his check where I had tried to gouge his eye with my thumb. A few years later, I stuck a stick in the front wheel of another boy's bike, causing it to jackknife and catapult him over the handlebars. The whole left side of his body was red-raw from where he had crayoned against the asphalt, but no permanent damage this time. That same year, I punched another boy in the back of the head while playing soccer.

I suppose this isn't particularly unique. Children get into school-yard fights. I wasn't always the aggressor, or the victor, even in the examples above.

In my Year 5 class, we were asked at the end of the year what we wanted to do next year, and draw a related picture. I wrote "control my temper", and drew a picture of me cold-clocking my sister. My mother was called to the office (her number was on speed-dial there) and she had "a talk" with my teacher, Mr Wilson. When mum came out of the office, she was misty-eyed and gave me a hug. This was aberrant behaviour for an office call, especially on a day she had night-shift. Apparently I had shown "great self-awareness for a boy my age", and was to be applauded.

To be honest, I have no idea why I wrote what I did that day. At the time, I severely regretted it. It was decided that every day I would stay behind at school for thirty minutes, and Mr Wilson would teach me how to control my temper. In addition to missing out on the afternoon soccer game, I also quickly became known as 'that troubled kid' who had to stay behind after school. I was still friends with most of the boys in my class, but their parents made sure I didn't get invited to too many sleepovers after that.

At first, the lessons were slow-going. Every day after lunch I would return to the classroom and begin dreading the last thirty minutes of the day. By the time that final lesson came around, I had worked up an internal compost of anger, anxiety and desperation. I guess that was to the benefit of the lesson, though — if I was calm and bored I suppose I wouldn't have learned anything.

If you were ever called to the teacher's desk in Mr Wilson's class, there were two scenarios. One, you were in the clear and would be offered a seat on the other side of the table. If you were in trouble — a scenario I was much more familiar with — you would stand. During these lessons I would always be standing.

"Are you angry?" Mr Wilson would periodically ask, resting his forearms on his desk and making a steeple with his fingers.

"No," I would sullenly deny, stubbornly refusing to meet his eyes.

Mr Wilson must have been a mind-reader in a past life however, because this answer never fooled him. He would lean back in his chair as though settling in for the evening and just stare at me. A few moments later, he would ask again. And again, I would insist I wasn't angry.

This would continue for the full half hour, after which I would be allowed to walk home while imagining the different ways I could disembowel a fifty-five year old man and get away with it.

I can't say how long this went on. Probably less than a full week. But by the end of that week, I felt like I had spent years standing in front of Mr Wilson's desk with my eyes glued to the carpet while I angrily insisted I was not angry. The problem was it was getting to be a bit of a routine, though. Nobody learns anything in a routine. I guess Mr Wilson realised that too, because one Friday he changed it very slightly.

"Are you angry?" The same question, but he had put just a little bit of anger in his own voice. A little bite. It wasn't much, but after being asked the same question a hundred times, each time as tepid as old bathwater, it made me hesitate.

"No? No." Mr Wilson leaned back into his chair, back into his usual routine. He began the stare. We were back to normal, and in a few seconds he would ask me again.

"Liar."

I guess nobody likes being called a liar, but probably nobody else once got almost expelled on the first day of school for trying to gouge out the eye of a kid that called him a liar. I can't say if Mr Wilson knew that, but I can say it worked.

"YES! YES I'M FUCKING ANGRY! YES, OK?" I was staring right back at him with two little impotent fists balled at my sides. I felt my eyes tearing up a bit the way they always did when I got really angry, as though I was about to cry. I always hated that.

Mr Wilson didn't react. He didn't yell back. He didn't try to calm me down. He didn't ask me what was wrong. He just sat there calmly and waited for me to start thinking again. When he had called me a liar, I had stopped thinking and just spat out the words like acid. But now while he sat calmly watching me, I started thinking again.

I had one of those slow awakenings, where things come at you bits and pieces. At first you feel a little bit nervous, and then very nervous. And then you realise you just dropped the f-bomb in front of a teacher — at a teacher — and nervous becomes that clawing rancid about-to-vomit feeling that is anxiety.

But I didn't get into trouble. Instead, after disorienting me with the liar accusation, he completely disconnected me with another question.

"Why?"

---

From then on, I began to visualise my anger as something like a tornado. It was something that I used to get caught up in and tossed around. But now, when I felt it start to lift me off my feet and the adrenaline seethe, a small voice in my head would ask Why? and I was able to step outside the tempest and see the path it had taken.

It doesn't just work for anger, either. It works for sadness, disgust, jealousy… once you start examining yourself, it is hard to stop. But of course, the downside is you can't turn it off, and it doesn't just apply to negative emotions. Excitement, happiness, contentment — all are just a little bit tempered by the small, logical, almost alien voice in your head that quietly asks Why?

You begin to feel a little disconnected from the world. Part of you is there, feeling angry, or excited, or sad, or whatever. But part of you is one step to the side, just observing. Life becomes museum art; still vivid and beautiful, but behind glass. Perhaps that's just what it means to grow up?

I have discovered one thing it doesn't work on though, at least not always. Fear. The mindless, eyeless terror that strikes right past anger, right past logic, and hits you right in your reptilian core, right at that tiny part of every human. It doesn't ask Why? It doesn't even speak the same language. It speaks to us in the language of the wild, the primeval, of teeth and claws in the night. And when it hits you, you feel it, totally, untempered, like mud between your toes or whisky on your tongue.

That's why I like horror movies.