Fuck E.T.
There’s only one thing I’m still child-like, heebie-jeebies afraid of in this world: aliens. Specifically, E.T.
Someone made this for me a few years ago, because people are jerks.
Why am I terrified of E.T.?
Blame my parents.
I was 3 years old when E.T. came out, and my sister was 6. That summer, my parents took us to see E.T. in the theater and I remember being horrified by his croaky voice, his creepy little squished body, his glowing body parts. I hated it, but I must have not expressed this fact to my parents appropriately, because they took us to see the movie again. Like, the next day.
In my memory, we saw E.T. in the theaters at least five times, but in reality it was probably only twice. What was definitely true was that I would have nightmares in which E.T. himself would come to my window, tap on it with his horrible finger, and croak “Come see my mooooooovie”. And then we did, which made me believe that E.T. was in cahoots with my parents.
Things get confusing from here- my sister insists that she was also terrified of E.T., but if that’s the case, then how did we end up with…
…the original E.T. soundtrack on vinyl…. (my sister and I would listen to it and scare ourselves silly)
And an E.T. birthday party for my sister? (from left, that’s my cousin Todd, neighbor Teresa, birthday girl Molly, me, and my cousin Tim) See the little E.T. figure on the cake, even?
My parents have always been wonderful, hands-on parents, so it must have been that my sister and I just never voiced our fear to them. But my terror of E.T. has remained, and I will never, ever, ever watch that movie again in my life. Fuck E.T.
Two fun postscripts to this story:
1) In grad school I told my fellow classmates of my phobia, and they took it upon themselves to systematically desensitize me. We call it therapist humor. I’d come in to class to find little E.T. figurines on my desk, and I gotta say, it kinda did help. I don’t shudder with revulsion when I see an E.T. now.
2) When Kumail and I first met and were e-flirting, one of our discussions, on MySpace, was about why I hated E.T. so much, describing him as having a “wrinkly penis body”. Totally locked that down.
Kiki said,
August 11, 2011 at 10:28 am
I was completely terrified of E.T. too and I still am. When I was little, the house we lived in had a “play room” attached to my bedroom and I thought E.T. lived in there. I spent the better part of my childhood terrified to go to bed. My parents always tried to explain that he was a good alien, but that didn’t help.