The Biblio File October 2017 Essay: “The Tingler”
THE TINGLER
October and pumpkins on porches and cottony ghosts wisping from trees and the Facebook post, “What movie terrified you as a child?” I didn’t have to think. No contest: The Tingler.
I was twelve, mesmerized, as I watched Vincent Price warn against the merciless Tingler that would burrow into my spine, infusing it with bone chilling fear. When, in the bathroom of a woman whose fear had driven her mad, the black and white film exploded into technicolor and blood gushed from the bathtub faucet, I shut my eyes and breathed hard. At the end, a lobster-like creature crawled across the screen, and big-eyed Vincent gasped, “Ladies and Gentlemen! The Tingler has escaped into the theater! Run! Run for your lives!”
That night, terrified and twisting in my twin bed, I called for help. No one came. The thick, lonely darkness was almost as scary as the movie.
I had often lain awake, scared my house would catch fire. “Dear God,” I’d pray, “Please don’t let my house catch on fire.” Then, afraid of being selfish, “And please don’t let anybody else’s house catch on fire either.” Scared I hadn’t covered all my bases, I’d add, “Tonight or any other night ever in the whole wide world. Okay?”
All that fear plus my daddy’s genes plus a rebellious temperament were fertile ground for adolescent and adult addiction, and, though massive quantities of alcohol gave me temporary courage, it was no contest for next morning’s hangover, where shame about what I’d done and fear about what I couldn’t remember matched my Tingler fear and then some.
At thirty-five, I got sober. Scared of everything I’d used booze to stay away from, I learned to sit with my pounding heart rather than run for my life, ala Vincent Price, from intimidating people and situations. Instead, I embraced the directives from the book, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”. I remember sitting at stop lights, saying to the dashboard, “I will always feel fear if I’m going to grow. The only way to get through the fear is to go out and do the fearful thing!” I got pretty comfortable working as a counselor at a clinic, but when I took the plunge into private practice, I was so scared I decided to write and facilitate a workshop on fear. After all, I was an expert.
I didn’t feel like an expert last November, when a destructive, deranged reality TV star was elected president of my country and began dismantling our democracy. I felt, and still feel, betwixt and between. I run for my life, internally anyway, from the fearmongering Tingler inside me, distancing from the daily horrors. The Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway part lets me acknowledge the atrocities and cry and cuss and then wipe my eyes and step up where I can. I donate to human rights organizations. I call senators. Ed and I do free couples workshops. We make and take biscuits to neighbors.
The part that flees from fear and the part that feels it swap off being in control. For all I know, they made a deal: Let that Carol person feel afraid—just enough to face and help with today’s horrors, but not enough to lose her mind, and, thus, not help at all.
The combo seems to be working. I knew I appreciated “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”. I never thought I’d be grateful for The Tingler.
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