How not to survive your horror movie experience

In horror movies, characters routinely do incredibly stupid things for no other reason except to advance the plot. If there's an escaped killer on the loose, and the power goes out, and the babysitter hears a noise coming from the dark, spooky basement, you better believe she's going down there to investigate. Maybe she'll think to bring a baseball bat with her. Maybe.

Now, I've seen a lot of horror movies. And like Jamie Kennedy in Scream, I've always figured that if I ever found myself in a horror movie-esque situation, I'd have all the mental tools necessary to not get murdered. I'm not saying I'd be the hero, who defeats the slasher, gets the girl, et cetera, et cetera. Just that I'd be smart enough to immediately recognize the situation--and when I say "immediately," I mean, like, the second one of my friends or fellow camp counselors or whatever went missing--and get the hell out of there. Or if escape was impossible, I would, also like Jamie Kennedy in Scream, at least be able to keep my head down and be the character who you sort of expect to die, but somehow manages to make it to the closing credits.

In other words, I figured I knew my shit, and didn't have to worry about being taken out by a guy in a hockey mask or what have you.

Then Saturday night happened. I got home, and as I was heading into my building, there in the parking lot was a dollar bill. And a few feet away from that was another dollar. And a few feet away from that was another dollar. And another. And another. And this seemed to go on for quite a ways, leading away from my building

It goes without saying that a literal trail of money is not the sort of thing that you come across every day. But did I stop? Did I think to myself, "Hmm, this doesn't quite seem right"? No, I just ran along, giddy as a little girl, grabbing up dollar bills, thinking this had to be the greatest day of my life. It's only when I got to the end of the trail, that I started to think about just how unusual this all was. And how there was no one else around. And how, hey, there's a van parked right next to me.

And too late, I suddenly realized this had to be a trap.

The dollar bills had been dipped in cyanide. Or Buffalo Bill was going to jump out and force me into the van. Or a guy in a hockey mask was sneaking up behind me to machete me to death.

And the worst part was, this wasn't even a trap befitting a character who makes it through, say, even the halfway point of a horror movie. This was strictly a "killer's first victim" sort of trap. The loser who gets killed before the opening credits in every Saw film? That was going to be me.

Obviously, since I lived to write this, none of those things happened. But they probably should have. I mean, Jesus, who ever heard of a 100 foot-long trail of money? Think, man! I totally deserved to be brutally murdered. Jamie Kennedy may have survived Scream, but he let his guard down just for a minute in Scream 2, and guess what? Dead! In a van! That could have been me.

I came out of this experience $16 richer. But more importantly, I came out of it a lot wiser. Next time, I'm not going to make such a rookie mistake.

Oh, I never did find out why all those dollar bills were on the ground. Maybe one of my neighbors is a stripper and forgot to take the singles out of her g-string before leaving work. Who knows? Or maybe there really was a guy hiding in the shadows ready to kill me, but when he saw how pathetic I looked, happily picking a bunch of filthy one dollar bills like they were hundreds, decided it would be far more cruel to just let me live.