I Choose Darkness

by Jenny Lawson

If you hide everything behind the couch and then scream the name of your family member while you pull the gift out and launch it at them, it’s just as much of a surprise (possibly more if they’re not paying attention). It’s also ecologically friendly.

Looking back now, it seems strange that I spent so much of my childhood on alert for roving satanists and unmarked quicksand, neither of which ended up being nearly as much of a problem in my real life as I had been led to believe. This was a gentle and naive time before the internet, when all our information came from urban legends and terrifying local news reports.

Me: Yeah. And blonde hair and hair bows and very impressive eyebrows and eyelashes. Because we had to make sure people knew she was a girl ghost. Even dead girls have to be attractive. Misogyny really did a number on us.