Spooky Stories

When you’re young, it’s fun to hear stories about ghosts and goblins. It’s fun to watch spooky movies, even dress up like monsters on Halloween. It's exciting to be scared! As time goes by, maturity sets in and those horror movie things don’t scare you like they used to when you were little. Now other things scare you, and it's no longer so exciting to be scared.

Now that I'm older the thing that scares me most in the world is… change.

Spooky isn’t it? Creepy, crawly, change! The scariest thing about change is that it hits you when you least expect it. There you are getting ready for bed, you lift up the cover and yikes! Out jumps change. Same thing happens at work. You happily go off to work each day, helping your nice boss get things done, and then one day your boss gets a new job. Poof! He's gone! AAAAAAAAAAaaaaayeeeeEEEE! (that's a scream) Where did they go? It's just plain weird.

No doubt about it, change is very scary.

What’s even scarier is when change comes to more than one major thing in you life at the same time. It’s like the rug is pulled out from under your whole routine. Dust is flying and your once comfortable stocking feet become ice skates on the slippery wooden floor. Yikes! Looking at all of this scary change optimistically can be really challenging when you are air born and facing an unpleasant impact with a hardwood floor. All you can really contemplate about the immediate future is just how much it’s really gonna hurt.

And does it ever!

There you are, a tangled lump of humanity, heaped up in the middle of a bare hardwood floor, a pile of dust on your head and up your nose. Your head throbs, your knees ache, and you think your arm is broken — not to mention your heart. At first you lie there in agony wondering when the paramedics will come. But after a while you realize you have no choice but to get up, dust yourself off, and head toward the nearest first aide station for a little TLC.

It's nice when the person leaving your life helps administer that TLC. They can help you ease up off the cold, hard floor and turn your mind's eye to a less bitter, loathsome perspective. Rather than Nightmare on Elm Street, maybe it’s just a Rear Window. It’s tough to see it that way at first, but eventually it gets a bit easier. You just hope that you have enough time to find your center before the next scary surprise comes and knocks you off balance and sends you back to that hardwood floor.

Eventually you're able to shine a light into all the spooky corners of those sinister changes that so afflicted your reality. You rip the mask off of those monstrously menacing changes that seemed so threatening and expose them as shadowy exaggerations of a much meeker reality. Then you look down and find that you are standing on a new rug — a little different than the one you stood upon before, but just as good — and even though your knees still ache, your arm's in a sling — we won't even talk about your heart — you find yourself getting curious about the future and all its possibilities.

So now that the scary part is over, you can peel your hands away from your face, raise your head and bid your dear friends adieu, with love, fondness, and well wishes. Then you can start picking out curtains to match that new rug.


(Goodbye Bruce you will be missed. Oh, and congratulations.)