Run towards danger? Or run away from it? I say…run away! I learned this valuable lesson my 1st year teaching high school English. We read Dracula. I hated that book. In fact, I had to read it my high school year and I couldnt finish it. So, to help ease the pain…we watched all the Dracula films ever created and critiqued them. There was this one modern version of Dracula where the good guys were in an airplane and they heard something. The noise they heard was random. It had no pattern. In fact, there was no way to analyze what took place. There was no information to compare it to. There was just this random noise, and an eery sense that something wasnt right. Three people in the group were too afraid to check out the noise, but one was curious and decided to go ahead of the group. Guess what happened? The random noise lead to an even more random danger. The danger was an evil entity--Dracula! No one understood Dracula. They didnt know he was a blood sucking parasite. This person had no idea what skills he would need to fight, or who his enemy was but hey…he wanted to touch it, study it, ask questions, probe. He even had a chance to run after being slightly attacked in the research…and So, he died. Amazingly, the other people in the group had to run for their lives the entire movie, but they all saw what happened to the guy who took Dracula head on. Not only did he get bit by Dracula, and ultimately die, physically…he came back just like Dracula. A spiritually evil being who wanted to do the same thing to them that had happened to him! Now, Dracula AND their transformed once friend, now turned enemy chased them throughout the whole film. Each time he got close to them, they saw him in a new way. But they never looked for Dracula. No way. They wanted to live! But since Dracula knew that they were aware of him and that awareness was the threat to his very existence…he wanted to destroy them. So, he kept hunting and finding them. They kept reusing what they had learned from the fight before to beat him. Each new survival skill took them to a new level, all while scared to death as they ran. Dracula didnt grow tired. They were. But in the end, they lived. And eventually, the knowledge the gathered from running away was what helped them overcome Dracula and ultimately kill him. One of my students said…Miss, why is there always someone who runs towards the danger. They always die. Dont they know theyll die? I have thought about this question since 2002. Its an excellent question. Why run toward danger? Wont you die. Lesson: Random noise + bizarre behavior x odd circumstances to the square root of eery feeling to it = RUN!!! #STRAIGHTUP youtu.be/dejp7HK8Owc
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:20:14 +0000