I recently saw the trailer for the movie Stone Angel (with my new honest to blog, supa-fave actress, Ellen Page) and it borked up a solid, hard memory nut with two levels:

One of the more clearer memories I have of my alcohol and pot-fogged time in high school was studying this book by Margret Lawrence. You may have noticed that my spelling and grammar is a bit poor, I blame anything other than not applying myself. I would fight with my English teacher because my brother was his golden student and English class was an annoying block of time before art class. I digress.

Stone Angel is a story of Hagar Shipley who recounts her life in shards of flashbacks and fragments of memories as she comes to the end of her proud life. Okay that’s the book in a nutshell (eat that, Mr Darling!). I remember the book not because of it’s structure (actually I did love the Tarantino-like recount of vignettes from her life) but because while we peeled back the themes and metaphors of a life fully lived, it dredged up a horror from my childhood (the second layer of that nut) that I had to deal with, and in some ways, I still haven’t come to grips with when I was a child. When I was even younger, I think in grade 4, I freaked out at a short film where a family visits their aging (grand)mother in a home. She’s so far gone into herself that all that we see on the outside is drool, yet inside, through movie magic, we see she’s lived a full and amazing life and she still has her memory. At the end of the short film, ran from the class and hid under my bed. Mom found me in tears and made me explain what had upset me so.

Dear readers, I am about to share with you something highly personal:

I am deathly afraid of getting old.

If I were ever to get trapped within my body and could not communicate my needs, I’d like notice that I have four days to live and left alone in that time so I could recount my life, a la Stone Angel. Day four would come and some pre-paid orderly would quietly enter my room and make me eat my pillow. The end.

Will I see this movie? I don’t know. Maybe. Should I stop being such a 13 year old in a 42 year old body? Maybe.