Don’t Be Afraid

Today’s Saturday Short is “Don’t Be Afraid” from the Shape Up and Fly Right collection. It’s about the darkness lurking under the facade of the perfect families in educational shorts.

The star of our short is Billy, who is building a complicated contraption in his bedroom. Mom comes in and asks him why he isn’t in bed yet. He’s not a bit sleepy, he tells Mom. Tough, she says, time for you to go to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow, remember? Now good night, she says, turning off the lights and shutting the door.

Billy doesn’t go to sleep after Mom leaves. Instead he stares at the shadows moving along the wall as the narrator plays creepy music and tells Billy that fear is natural and not shameful. It won’t help you when the closet monster jumps out to eat your face anyway.

Suddenly Billy sits straight up. He leaps out of bed to turn on the lights, calling for his mother. She comes in. What’s wrong? Can I sleep with the lights on tonight, he asks. Oh, Mom says, so that’s what’s going on.

Mom walks Billy back to bed. Are you often afraid like this? she asks. You should have told me. Being afraid of the dark is nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone is afraid sometimes. Remember last Sunday when Mom was making breakfast? She spilled some bacon grease on the stove and it caught fire. Everyone was terrified until Dad smothered the fire with a pot lid. Their fear was a way of alerting them of the danger.

Speaking of danger, remember the time you were playing ball with your friends at school and accidentally threw the ball on the roof? Remember how Danny was mad at you? Remember how he told you to climb up the drain pipe to get it down? You were afraid then, weren’t you Billy? You knew that if you climbed the drain pipe you would fall. That fear was your way of warning you not to do something stupid. So you did the smart thing and got the janitor to bring his ladder to get the ball down. Sometimes it’s good sense to pay attention to your fear.

But not always. Sometimes we’re afraid of things that can’t hurt us. Like Kathy Lewis who was afraid of dogs. Billy found out about that when he was playing with Scrappy the Collie. Kathy wouldn’t come near him when she saw the dog. In fact, she ran across the street. What a fraidy cat, Billy says. Scrappy wouldn’t have hurt her.

That wasn’t a nice thing to say about Kathy, Mom doesn’t say. Instead she goes into being afraid of what people might think and how that is wrong. Remember when Mrs. Campbell called her a few months ago looking for Frank? He hadn’t come home from school and his parents were worried. Eventually they found Frank in the basement, hiding next to their single barrel in the middle of the room. He was afraid to show his parents his report card because he got bad grades. If he got bad grades, his parents wouldn’t love him anymore he thought. Where in the heck did Frank get that idea? What’s been going on at the Campbell place? And why is there a single barrel in their basement? What’s it for? Do we need to be concerned?

So you see, Mom says, people can be afraid of all sorts of foolish things. Like being afraid of the dark, Billy says. But what can you do about it? First, Mom replies, figure out if there’s something real to be afraid of, like the grease fire. Then learn how to protect yourself, like when Dad threw the pot lid on the fire. If it’s nothing concrete that’s frightening you, decide if it’s a warning that something is incredibly stupid and you shouldn’t do it, like climbing the drain pipe.

But how can you tell if it’s a real danger, Billy asks. Use your common sense, says Mom. Find out if others are afraid of the same thing you are. Like Kathy who could see that Scrappy wasn’t dangerous by the way Billy was playing with him. That’s true, says Billy, and Kathy isn’t afraid of dogs anymore. Her dad got her a Cocker spaniel puppy, a breed known for serious biting. Kathy trained her dog to destroy her enemies and now she’s not afraid anymore.

You can also get over your fear by talking it over with someone, like Mom and Billy are right now. Frank should have done that, Mom said. His fear of his parents was one reason why he got bad grades in the first place. Seriously, what’s going on at the Campbells? I’m starting to wonder if we need to get CPS involved over there.

So how about your fear of the dark? Well, Billy says, it’s not so much the dark as much as the fact that he’s afraid that Mom and Dad might slip away in the middle of the night and never come back. Oh, don’t worry about that, Mom says. If they’re going to one of their all-night keggers they’ll call a babysitter for Billy. And they won’t leave without telling him, either.

Now let’s try this going-to-bed thing again. Should I leave the light on, Mom asks? No, just leave the door cracked open, Billy says. Okay, Mom says. Good night, she says as she turns out the light and halfway closes the door.

The narrator returns to drone Billy to sleep by recapping the lessons of the short for the second time. Billy feigns sleep to get the narrator to leave his room. And what do you know, it works! Good job, Billy!

Duck and Cover

Today’s Saturday Short is a classic among educational films. It’s “Duck and Cover” from the Red Scare series.

Meet Bert. He’s a turtle who’s being followed by a dynamite-wielding monkey for some reason. The dynamite explodes, destroying both the monkey and the tree it was hanging from. Not Bert, though. He retreated inside his shell to the jaunty “Duck and Cover” theme song. The narrator tells us that we all need to learn to do what Bert did. That’s great, except that humans don’t have shells.

Now we’re in a classroom where children are hiding under their wooden desks. The narrator tells us this is what we need to do if a nuclear bomb goes off. Because the wood is strong enough to protect us from both the explosion and the subsequent fallout, apparently.

So what happens when an atomic bomb explodes? Let’s save some time and ask the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No? That’s too depressing? Okay, fine.

The first thing that happens, the narrator continues, is there’s a bright flash of light that turns everything into an animation. Then comes the shock wave followed by strong winds that will knock everything down–except the turtles because they’re in their shells. And the cockroaches, but that’s a story for another time.

If you think a sunburn hurts, the narrator says, the burn you get from the initial bright flash will be even worse. It’s so bad it might even evaporate you and bake your shadow in the pavement, he doesn’t say. But if you hide under your wooden desk and cover your face and the back of your neck, you’ll be fine. The heck with your hands.

Betty wants to know how we’ll know when the bomb will explode. You won’t, Betty, so spend the next forty years in abject terror. The teacher tells her that there might be a warning or there might not, it all depends. That’s why there are civil defense workers always staring into the sky to protect us. But every now and then they have to blink, so they might miss something.

If you’re at recess when the sirens go off, drop everything and line up in an orderly fashion to proceed into the school. They might save five, maybe even ten children before the rest are burnt to a crisp. If you’re at home, scurry into your basement apartment. Oh, you don’t live in a basement apartment? Nice knowing you. If you’re walking down the street, find a white man to point you to the public shelter signs.

The sirens will be blaring if we get a warning, maybe a full thirty seconds before impact. But what if they aren’t? What do we do then?

The first sign is the flash. If you still have your eyesight, turn into a turtle. Some boys wearing ties show a group of schoolchildren how to Duck and Cover against a wall. Remember to cover your face and neck, but leave the rest of your spine exposed so it’ll be shattered by the falling debris. If you’re in the cafeteria, just go under the table and forget about lunch that day.

Remember your ABP’s: Always Be Paranoid. If the bomb goes off while you’re walking to school, slam your sister into a brick wall and cover yourself with your Good Republican Cloth Coat. Radiation can’t penetrate cloth. If you’re riding your bike, just crash into any convenient barricades and stay down until a man in a white helmet tells you to get up.

If you’re on the bus, just jump into the aisle so you’ll be protected by a pile of other people when the bus crashes. If you’re on a picnic with your family, cover up with the newspaper–radiation can’t penetrate newsprint. If you’re plowing your fields, give up and throw yourself under your tractor.

Are all the children thoroughly terrified now? Good. Keep that feeling. Bottle it up deep inside where it will emerge randomly throughout your life until the fall of the USSR. And remember, whenever you see a bright flash, whether it be the A-bomb, lightning, or any random raves you attend, duck and cover against the nearest wall. It’ll make it more convenient to find your shadow after you’ve been vaporized.

Go home and have fun, kids!