Imagine a woman walking along her favorite bike trail, face turned toward the sun. She's using the hour before her 10-year-old son gets out of school to get some much-needed exercise and hopefully burn off a fraction of the calories she's ingested eating fast food every day for the past week. All seems perfectly fine, but ominous music in the background informs the audience that the unsuspecting woman is about to meet her doom.
Not noticing until it is almost too late, she finds herself nearly stepping on a black, squirmy, garter snake! (You should know that this particular woman is deathly phobic of snakes, beyond anything even remotely rational.) Frightened beyond reason, she screams a blood-curdling scream and attempts to run away. Unfortunately, she's not wearing her good walking shoes; they are out in Shepherd where she is living temporarily. Instead, she has on some loose canvas slip-ons, and when she attempts to run for her life, one of those slip-ons falls off and she trips, falling right down onto the pavement. Knees skinned but mostly terrified the snake is going to catch her, she jumps up, grabs the shoe, and runs as fast as she can away from the danger. Music calms, and the audience can once again breathe.
But then.
Wait.
Oh no!
She notices that her car keys are no longer in her jacket pocket. They must have slipped out when she fell. She will be forced to walk right back to the place where that nasty snake was hiding, just waiting to attack, and try to find her keys. She begins to walk back slowly, telling herself to look straight down, not right or left, until she spots the keys. Intense music plays in the background, heightening the audience's suspense. She tip-toes quietly back to the spot, looking neither right nor left, and spots the keys glistening in the sunlight. Without hesitation, she grabs them and quickly darts away.
Seriously. It was just like a horror movie!
I cannot laugh. I hate that kind of movie!
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