While I have lots of friends who love me dearly, at home, it’s not often that there is a day that is solely about me. I grew up in a house with an Autistic brother, meaning a lot of the attention went to him. Anything we wanted to do, Mum and Dad had to calculate and tiptoe around Joey and his problems, which often put my needs on the back burner. Mum and Dad always did their best to accommodate me as much as possible, but the truth is just that he needed more than I did. I was the “easy” child.
Now, even more so, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to know what Joey wants or needs, as he doesn’t tell you: “I am hungry, but I don’t like the restaurant you chose, I would like to go somewhere else” he will instead sulk and not get out of the car. And sometimes, not even the house. As a quick solution, it is often decided to make him happy and go with whatever he wants.
Out of everyone at home, I eat the biggest variety. That being said, I enjoy venturing out to try new things more than the rest of us. A few days ago, I was told that “today would be my day”. Therefore, I was given the opportunity to pick where we went for lunch. I chose Chick-fil-A because there is food that everyone can eat, and I really like the Chick-fil-A sauce they offer. Joey apparently did NOT agree with this. But as usual, he didn’t express this. He made a fuss about it in the car. Mum and Dad were considering just taking him home.
The whole morning, they were only fussing about Joey being upset because apparently, he wanted Chili’s for lunch. So much for “My Day”. When I brought this up to Dad, he didn’t seem to understand why it was bothering me. In his words, it was Mum’s idea to make it my day, and in fewer words, he didn’t see it that way. It was an “if you say so” kind of reaction. This upset me, and secretly I was hoping that Dad would take Joey home and be out of my sight.
For all my life, it never really dawned on me how often I’m put to the side to accommodate Joey more. But now that we’re on an actual holiday, I’m starting to notice, and it has been bothering me since we got here. It’s especially prevalent when reading Dad’s blogs, watching him write paragraphs and paragraphs about Joey, and then include just one sentence at the end about me. Ouch. I never really brought it up to my parents, as I know what they’re going to say. Yet, it’s still upsetting. I want ONE day without fuss. Not Mum and Dad coddling Joey, not Joey making the choices, not splitting up because he doesn’t want to do this or that. I want to have one thing for myself. Is that so hard? Unfortunately, yes, it is.
You can imagine my glee when I found out about the Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) at Universal Studios. For those who don’t know me that well, I absolutely love horror. Not the bloody, gore, person-sawed-in-half kind of horror; I love the jump scares. The actual fear you feel when you don’t know if something will jump out at you. Whether it’s horror movies, Halloween, or friends hiding around the corner for a “prank,” I just think it’s funny. I always laugh at my own reaction.
Every year, for our birthdays, we get one big present and lots of small ones. This year, my big present was two tickets to the HHN. It was undecided if Mum or Dad were to go with me, but that was a question for later.
When I found out that one of the “scare houses” was going to be in the theme of Five Nights at Freddy’s, I was OVER THE MOON! Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) is an indie horror game that was released in 2014. There are now many sequels and new versions of the game that have since been released. My primary school friends and I would role-play at school as these characters. As time went on, more characters were created, resulting in more content for us to explore and play with. FNAF has been an interest of mine on and off for the last 11 years, and I have already watched the new FNAF movie twice. I was very, VERY excited to be able to now experience the real deal in REAL LIFE! Thank you, Dad, for this present 🙂
Back to today:
Dad and I have a strange relationship. Over the years, I have noticed that I started becoming a bit more sadistic. This is presented as laughing at Dad when he is either wrong, scared, hurt, or losing in a game. I was excited to see Dad’s reaction to what was to come. LOL.
Dad had explained briefly what we did during our evening at HHN in his blog, but I found it boring to read. He didn’t go into any detail at all! His reasoning was “pacing” or whatever. Yeah, boring. I’m actually cool, so I will tell you niche things that happened.
Dad is getting older, his muscles are weaker, his back is awful, and he suffers physically rather quickly. This is because, like I said, he is getting older. I am 19 and have similar issues. I have what’s called Hyper-Mobility. It’s basically when your muscles are too flexible. My primary problem is with my knees and ankles, as they are quickly overworked and become painful due to a lack of stability. I feel 80. To fix this, Mum and I bought a second-hand walker, which I carry around, so I can hold onto something while I’m walking. It definitely helps, 10/10 recommended. Bags and such are not permitted into the scare houses, so we pile our things on the walker and can still go through. Saves us $30 on various locker costs. Thank God being disabled comes with perks.
We go through the express lane at the Five Nights at Freddy’s scare house, walking past the thousands of people who must wait two hours before they get a turn to walk inside. I felt a little guilty walking past everyone, but having a walker to “prove” my disability made me feel less like everyone was staring and judging me for “cutting line”. I love having anxiety. Either way, we waited in line for about 20-30 minutes before it was our turn.
It was everything I had hoped for. We got to see the animatronics used in the movie up close!! As we’re walking through, I didn’t get jump-scared that much, but that was okay because I often saw the people hiding around the corner, and they saw me, so no use trying to spook me. But that did mean that the person behind me would get scared. Want to take a guess who that was? Yep, Dad. His reactions were PRICELESS. For a man who doesn’t allow swearing in his house, he sure did swear a LOT. Great example to your kids!
After Dad caught his breath, we continued to the next scare house, Terrifier. Neither of us had seen the movie, but I had seen clips of “Art the Clown”, so I was familiar with what he looked like. The line was longer, but we muddled through. Soon it was our turn. Of course, I walked first. I watched the people in front of me get scared, so I knew what to expect. Dad, however, went in strategically. He realised that if you walked far enough away from the group in front of you, then they would scare you as well. This meant I got the joy of watching him almost fall over from a heart attack on every corner. We started counting. By the end of the scare house, he had encountered 12 jump scares. For reference, I got scared 4 times. I was rolling on the floor laughing lol.
I hadn’t eaten anything yet, so I spotted a corndog stand. I paid $13 damn dollars for the thing, and I didn’t even like it! It was gross and mushy. I secretly threw half of it away so as not to disappoint Dad with my irresponsible spending. After that, neither of us actually remembers which horror house we did next. I think it was something, something WWE, but whatever.
We decided to take a break from the heart palpitations and decided to see if the Mummy ride was open at this time of night. To our delight, it was. The Mummy ride had always been a family favourite, so we go in every time we’re at the park. Although you need to use the lockers, which will cost you $3 with backpacks. Not us, though, because we have the perks of being disabled, and again, pile everything on my walker.
Soon after, we head towards the Harry Potter world. As we enter, we notice that the dragon sitting atop the building is about to breathe fire. I had never seen it before, so I wanted to watch. I hear a faint “Jae, look at me!” behind me. I turned around, and Dad was what I thought was filming, and I turned around again to watch the fire. It was very cool.
After which, we went to get butterbeer for me. I absolutely love butterbeer. Always have. But it’s only possible to get it in the Universal Studios Harry Potter sections of the parks. In case you are wondering, I do not live anywhere near these parks, which makes it a bit harder to get butterbeer when I am craving it.
Before we left, Dad had promised me to buy me butterbeer when we were in the parks. Dad does not remember this, so when I was explaining this to him a few days prior, Dad said AND I QUOTE: “Okay, I will buy you butterbeer.” I was going to ask about the terms and conditions of this agreement, but then I decided to use it against him. We shook hands. He then said, “I will buy you butterbeer today”. No no, that’s not what you said. You didn’t specify; you only said you would buy me a butterbeer. That is the agreement. I found a loophole! Eventually, dad decided to just go along with it. Dad now pays for all of my butterbeer during our stay.
Back on topic, we are in line for butterbeer. Dad proceeds to show me a post he made on Facebook about what we were doing. I then was greeted with an awful picture of myself posted to his page without my permission. I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure that asking to post photos before displaying them to the public is a basic human decency, no? Dad seemed to disagree. I asked him to remove the photo because I just looked terrible. Dad argued with me. He thought it was bullshit to have to ask permission. Reluctantly, he deleted it. Knowing the prices of the butterbeer ($10…), I was not confident he would want to buy me one in this mood. I sent mum a message explaining that dad was upset with me. Mum was on my side. She also said, and I quote, “Just flatter him, he’ll get over it”. I was still worried that he wouldn’t pay for it, so I said, “The butterbeer is a bit pricey, so if you don’t want to pay for it, then I will.” Hoping he’d feel a bit guilty. Dad did not get it and said, “Yeah, well, you have your own pocket money.” Yep, great. I paid out of pocket, and we retook the picture so he could put something back on Facebook.
We continued to more of the scare-houses, specifically, “Dolls, Let’s Play Dead”. The line wasn’t that long at all, and we pretty much went straight through. It wasn’t as scary as some of the previous horror houses, so I spent most of the time admiring the art and creativity that went into the design of the rooms and costumes. It was very well done. I sometimes wonder if I would enjoy being on those art teams.
The next few scare houses were a long walk away, around the back of the park. We were walking on a closed-off road to get there. By now, we are aching and don’t want to walk that far, but we did anyway. The scare-house itself was Nordic, mountain, werewolf, “curse-in-the-woods” themed. I have seen Swedish horror movies that reminded me of this house. Honestly, so far, this one was the scariest. I actually screamed a few times, once throwing my walker across the room out of fear. I promptly ran after it, as not only Dad, but the security guard halfway through, laugh at me from behind.
We decided it was time to have dinner. Through the pain, we stumbled all the way to the Hard Rock Café located at the entrance of the two parks. I have been to Hard Rock Cafe many times, most recently on my trip to Denmark with my girlfriend, Sophie, just about two months ago. There is only one located in the Netherlands, which is in Amsterdam. Funnily enough, I went there with Sophie last year as well. When I came back from the bathroom, Dad told me he suspected our waiter of being gay. I said it was possible as our host was literally covered in glitter. Our server was very friendly, and my gaydar was indeed going off. I sensed he was a bit fruity. Anyway, the food there is great! I love the barbecue wings and the mac and cheese, which is what I ordered. Dad got a steak and a half rack of ribs. At some point, the server asked about the pin I had on my bag. It’s a pin with the words “Girls though” written on it in the colours of the lesbian flag, as I indeed am a lesbian. He asked what it meant. I said, not really sure how to explain it, ‘I’m a lesbian”, and he said, “Oh, okay, yeah, me too”. Hmm. I’m not sure he knows what a lesbian is or if he’s a transgender woman in the closet, but who cares? People can do whatever they want. Either way, I thought it was funny.
As we’re leaving the restaurant, it was about 11 pm. The park closes at 2 am. I decided I want to get the most out of my experience and visit one more scare-house, as there were a couple I had missed. I told Dad this. He is convinced he hid his disappointment well, but alas, it was undeniable that the poor man wanted to go home. Too bad, MY day, MY choice. We walk back into the park, and Dad is out of breath. He was complaining about how far we had to walk. I said that he didn’t have to go with me, and just as I was about to say “but I would appreciate it if you went with me”, he jumped in and said “okay, I’ll sit here” and sat on the bench we were coincidentally standing next to. Damnit. I walked off without a word, pissed that I had to go on my own. But I’ll live, I like the horror anyway.
As I’m nearing the scare-house line, I realised that I am… well, on my own. I am alone. I never had a problem with horror or jump-scares before because I never experienced it alone. I always played or watched that content with other people. But now I’m not playing a game. No no, people are actually jumping out in front of me, and I have no one to laugh at, no one to hold hands with, nothing. Shit.
Just at the entrance to the scare-house, I turned around to the couple behind me who were arguing about posting on social media and asked if I could walk with them. The boyfriend wasn’t amused, but he went with it anyway. The girlfriend was nice, liked to prank him. He wasn’t amused.
After this, I walked towards the next horror house. There were only two that I hadn’t done yet. That was Jason, and one other one I couldn’t remember. I walked towards Jason, on the opposite side of the park. On the way there, I remembered that the other one was next to where I had just come out. I just walked 10 minutes in the wrong direction. No way am I turning back.
The Jason scare-house was BY FAR the scariest. I don’t know if it’s because I was alone, this time between two Spanish-speaking groups which meant no one to ask if I could walk with them, or because I was jump-scared about 20 times in a row… either way, nope, never again…
When I came out of the Jason attraction, I realised I literally have no idea where I am. It was a small part in the park where I have never been because there was literally nothing interesting there. It took me about 5 minutes to figure it out after looking around.
I made my way to the FNAF scare house one more time to finish up my night. But that meant I had to walk ALL the way around again… so I asked someone to make sure I wasn’t going to waste my time. Alas, I had to walk for 10 minutes. I was literally right next to it.
While I was in line, I decided to check my phone to see if anyone had messaged me. Joey messaged me 2 minutes ago asking how I made the noodles he liked. I called him as I didn’t have much time and gave him a brief explanation. He said it was sufficient. At the end of the call, I thought I’d test my luck and say “I love you” to him. Joey hasn’t said he loves me in about 10 years, so I wasn’t hopeful, as I had tried this before. I hear a quick “Love you too” and then he hangs up. Wow. I have no other words. Just wow.
As I was walking towards the exit of the park, I took some selfies with the actors on the street and found Dad at the exit. We made our way home, expecting a quiet house, as it was about 01:50 am by the time we parked. Quietly sneaking back into the house, we hear a loud “And WHERE do you think you’ve been?!” Shit. Mum is awake. BUSTED. Apparently, Dad messaged her at the restaurant that we’d be home in an hour. Its now two hours later… we did not survive… this is the ghost of me making this as an obituary… totally…
Ghost Jae out, byebye 🙂