7 February 2022
When our parents were all out carousing, my older cousins, in the guise of babysitting, let me stay up and watch these films, which were certainly not "Snow White," which, come to think of it, was darned scary as well. They schooled me carefully, on pain of banishment, that I must never tell that I was allowed to stay up and watch terrifying cinema. I promised. That's how I first saw Frankenstein, and my cousins were horrified when, after the movie ended, I burst into tears.
"Look what you did," one said to the other. "She's going to tell."
But I wasn't going to tell. I confounded them by saying, "It's so sad. I feel so sorry for him!"
I meant the monster.
