Speaking of things that scare me

Tornadoes are right up there. Another thing that used to scare me was E.T. Yes, that loveable, funny-looking alien used to scare the be-jeebers out of me. I was convinced he lived in the grove of trees behind our house and was secretly waiting under my bed every night to grab my legs. Why I thought E.T. had turned mean (because in the movie he is so nice) is beyond me. I just remember jumping onto my bed every night from about three feet away.

I also remember seeing the movie in the theater. I was 7 years old and went with my friend, Jenny Schroeder. Her dad took us, and I remember when the "astronaut" guys come walking over the horizon near the end, he jumped about two feet out of his seat.

After the movie, my sisters and I were obsessed with all things E.T. I can't even tell you how many boxes of E.T. cereal we consumed to send in the box tops to get a cool record with Neil Diamond singing "Heartlight". I wonder where that thing is. How many more pounds of Reese's Pieces were consumed by each child after that movie as well? With all this love for E.T., I'm not quite sure where it all went wrong.

Now E.T. has been playing this past weekend on Nickelodeon. The girls decided that was what they wanted to watch before bed on Monday night--before that, they had only seen E.T. in comercials. So being the mean mom that I am, I still enforced their 9 pm bedtime which left the movie right when E.T. came back to life. Thankfully we have it on tape (yes, we still own a working VHS player) and its still playing on Nick every 3 hours. Now EE is a little obsessed with the movie. Just now she came out and asked me, "Why is Elliot letting all the frogs out?" Next thing you know she is going to want to build a phone to call home any aliens who may have left their children here. At least she's not scared like her mom!