Horror of Horrors

I saw a great horror movie from Thailand at last week's International Asian American Film Fest called 'The Unseeable'. It reminded me a lot of a story by Alvin Schwartz, from his popular kids book 'Stories To Tell In The Dark'. And that story, in turn, reminds me of one of my most embarrassing moments: It was around Halloween and my fifth grade teacher asked everyone to write an original 'spooky' story which we'd all have to read aloud to the class. Now there's an assignment I could sink my teeth into, I thought. I loved the horror genre. I thought I could scare the pants out of my classmates and come up with the best story. Unfortunately, I was also a notorious procrastinator, and therein lies the tragedy of yours truly. Having spent the entire evening glued to the T.V. (and in truth, having absolutely no original ideas of my own), I resorted to outright plagiarism, pilfering a ghost story from the aforementioned 'Stories To Tell...' book. The next day I got up in front of the class, read my story as quickly as possible, and quietly sat back down, foolishly thinking I'd successfully duped everyone. Wishful thinking, to be sure. Even my pea brain intellect couldn't escape the fact that that book was read a least once, if not many times by every member of the class. But I didn't care–what's done is done. I figured I'd ride out this little embarrassment through the end of class, and everything would be routinely forgotten the next day. Ha. Then to my complete and utter horror, a classmate got up and proceeded to read the EXACT SAME STORY. I still recall the rather loud, collective gasp of the class as they listened to her version of the story, their heads darting back and forth from me to her, the both of us beet red and squirming. I cringe just thinking about it now!