So, even if I haven’t truly conquered it yet, I find it only fitting that I (finally) share my own.
The Screaming Eagle.
A massive wooden roller coaster that consumed much of the St. Louis Theme Park. Its enormous size and sharp turns made my stomach turn with anticipation. I remember it like yesterday.
“Daddy I don’t want to go on that. It’s scary.” Within seconds dozens of screaming riders zoomed by as the line slowly inched along. My 10 year old mind couldn’t comprehend that people would voluntarily buckle up, for what must have been their assured death. Heights and intense speed were not my thing.
No words rang truer in the winter of 2008. I had just started my TV show, The Rise To The Top.
I had just invested my first batch of my own savings into The Rise To The Top and really had no idea what I was doing. Realize we were doing everything from production, promotion, marketing, advertising and everything in-between including cleaning bathrooms. I used a production studio to shoot our first episode. Nothing against this particular production studio, but after the first episode, I was called into their offices for a meeting.
“David,” they said, “We made a mistake. We realize we told you production would be one price for the season, but it is now going to be 2.5x times that price and we have to shoot the next episode in one week.”
Holy crap.
When I was younger I was afraid of waking up somewhere strange where I was in great danger.
I used to sleepwalk, so I knew it was possible.
The neighbors had brought me home a couple times, and in another house, I was lucky I hadn’t fallen down the stairs. My parents were just as fearful: all it would have taken was a car driving too fast after I had ended up in the street.
Acting School.
The last MAJOR thing I can remember being scared of was to enroll into an acting school and jumpstart my career. Thinking deeper into it, it was actually the fear of poverty. The funny thing is, the thought of being an actor never scared me when I was young. I had been taught this fear, by other people, first person being my dad.
This was back before I even enrolled in high school. After having heard that I chose to become an actor, he thought it was just small talk and told me to reconsider my choice and choose something more “secure” and “stable.” Well, whatever he said went out one ear and right out the other. I was stubborn then, still am now. When picking a couple of high school electives, of course, I had to sign up for a couple of acting classes.
I was going to get my foot in the door one way or another.
Clowns.
When I was four years old, my parents took me to a drive-in movie theater in Brooklyn, NY, that had multiple screens so it could play many movies at once. It was half-circle in shape and had five screens. Ours was the screen on the far right. The place was packed. Before the movie started, we got out of the car, stretched a little, and socialized with the other families around us.
Dusk was fast approaching so we waited in line for some snacks and made our way back to the car to set up the speaker for the show. It was a little chilly so sitting outside with the other kids wasn’t an option. The floodlights at the theater field went black and the opening credits began. I watched with rapt attention from the back seat as The Muppets took Manhattan. But as any four year old would tend to do, I grew impatient with sitting still in the car and my eyes and mind started to wander.
I saw a little girl on the screen directly behind ours, on the far left, and was immediately drawn to her. She looked a little bit like me. I wanted to watch her and see what was going over in her movie. I propped myself up on the back ledge of the car to watch my new friend. She was having trouble communicating what was going on to her parents. They didn’t understand what she meant when she said, “They’re here.”
The girl’s brother was getting ready for sleep one night and glanced over at the chair beside his bed. His toy clown doll sat peacefully by his side, wishing him a goodnight. The boy got into bed. Then he heard movement. He looked around but didn’t see anything out of place. He closed his eyes once again. He heard a “thud” and his eyes flew open. His clown friend was gone. Most likely he fell on the floor. The boy leaned over to check the floor but saw nothing. He leaned farther to check to see if his doll had fallen in such a way that it would be under the bed.
The possessed clown with the evil grin grabbed the boy and dragged him down off the bed.