Scared Stupid

October 2025

No offense to poultry, but I am a chicken. Always have been. I am pretty much afraid of everything. Oh sure, I cover it up with lots of laughs and giggles so nobody knows my secret, but sometimes I think my kids might be on to me. 

“Haha! It’s so funny how Mom always runs out of the TV room whenever the flying monkeys show up in 'The Wizard of Oz.'”

When they were young, I tried to cover my panicky escapes by serenely gliding back into the TV room once the flying monkeys departed, carrying a freshly popped bowl of popcorn. My kids would gratefully dig in, but I’d see the knowing smiles they exchanged. Oh yeah, they were on to me.

Because I am a chicken, October is a challenging month for me. I don’t do spiders, jump scenes, ghosts, corn mazes, darkness, witches, fake blood, or pumpkin lattes. All terrifying. And I blame Dad.

Oh sure, you all know Dad as the family-friendly, outdoor humorist, the great storyteller roaring with laughter as he shares his own stories, the bumbling sportsman falling in creeks and rolling down mountains, the adventurous boy full of hairbrained schemes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dad was all that. But he was also the crazed maniac who would wait for hours in our dark cellar until Mom sent some hapless child, usually me, down into the dungeon to get a jar of her home-canned tomatoes. I’d be swinging my arm wildly in the pitch black darkness, trying to grab the string that turned on the lone, flickering light bulb when THWACK! My hand would connect with a tall, silent, barely breathing…AX MURDERER!

“Pat! For heaven’s sake, stop scaring Kelly!” Mom would yell as I tore shrieking past her in the kitchen. “And bring me up a jar of tomatoes.”

The ax murderer would comply, chuckling over his success.

Growing up McManus, we girls were a constant source of amusement for Dad as he leaped out of coat closets, thought he saw sharks circling our little boat on Pend Oreille Lake, or randomly grabbed your foot from under a fallen tree as you peacefully picked huckleberries on top of a mountain. We tried to get back at him by coming up with elaborate schemes to scare him, but he was always ahead of us. The guy was a master.

Grandma K, our mom’s mother, did not approve of Dad scaring us. In fact, she didn’t approve of much. She was a red-headed firecracker, and you’d better watch your step around her. As her first grandchild, I was her favorite and could do no wrong, and I took full advantage of that exalted position. But everyone else was on thin ice, especially Dad, and he knew it.

Then the summer of 1960 rolled around, our family decided to go tent-camping around western Montana with Grandma K. After three days of driving and camping around the majestic area, we pulled into a campground for the night in an arid, pine forest. It was a picturesque area with lots of cliffs and boulders—rattlesnake country, as my little sister Shan and I were warned numerous times as we leapt out of our barely stopped vehicle to set off on our camp explorations. The adults and baby Peggy could set up camp without us, and they were glad to see us go after listening to three days of whining while crammed together in the car.

“Girls, take your dad with you,” yelled Mom. “I cannot take another second of his whining. And watch out for rattlesnakes!”

Dad offered to take us for a hike to the top of the rocky bluff that loomed over our campsite while we waited for the sun to go down, so it would be cool enough to start a fire for dinner. We jumped at the chance to escape grumpy Grandma K and crying baby Peggy bouncing on Mom’s knee. Besides, Dad was our hero, and rattlesnakes wouldn’t stand a chance against him.

Up we hiked with Dad leading the way, winding around boulders, clumps of dead grass, and a couple of scraggly pine trees. Not a rattlesnake was in sight, but we kept our talk to a minimum, so we could hear any warning rattles. We reached the small flat area on top of the bluff and were surprised at the panoramic view. Peering over the cliff edge that looked way down on our campsite, we hollered at Mom and Grandma K, who were now starting to build the evening campfire. They hollered at us to get away from that edge! Dad wasn’t worried, so neither were we.

Until Dad said, “Did you hear that?”

“No, what?”

“Listen!”

Faintly, oh so faintly—a rattle! We froze.

“I can’t tell where it’s coming from,” Dad whispered. “You’d better come over by me. Move slowly.”

No child has ever moved as slowly and silently as we tiptoed away from the edge and back to Dad. Again, the faint rattle. No more fun and games; this was deadly serious now. We could hear shouts from below telling us to come roast our hot dogs. Dad risked a yell to tell them we were on our way.

“Rattlesnakes!” I shrieked, and suddenly we had the attention of most of the small campground.

“Shhh!” said Dad as we clustered around him. I shut up immediately because the rattles were coming closer now as the light was fading. Everywhere we turned, the rattles came from a different direction. We were surrounded.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dad said as he lifted Shan onto his shoulders. I clung to his belt and walked on the heels of his boots as we quickly descended the trail, thwarting the rattlers that I hoped would not want to leave their warm rocks. Dad had saved us again.

It was almost dark by the time we got back to our campsite. To our surprise, no one seemed very worried about our ambush by rattlesnakes as Shan and I chattered away about our narrow escape. Grandma eased out of her folding chair and began to pass out whittled sticks to roast wieners on. As she passed Dad, we heard a rattle. Shan and I screamed, and Grandma levitated two feet in the air and came down beating Dad with the roasting sticks. He laughed and fished his keys out of his pocket and rattled them at her.

“Criminently! Those poor kids! What is wrong with you?!” Grandma yelled at Dad and got a few more whacks in as we all collapsed with laughter.

Later that night, we were visited by the ranger to check out the rattlesnake rumor that had somehow spread throughout the campground. Fortunately, he also appreciated a good joke and stayed to toast marshmallows with us.

Epilogue:  Did Grandma K’s beating with hot dog sticks reform Dad’s joy of scaring his kids?  Fortunately no. Some of our favorite memories are of Dad scaring us, and he perfected it to an art form. In his later years, his favorite technique was just a well-timed, startled look over your shoulder (ax murderer) or at your feet (spider). His middle-aged daughters never learned. We would jump and scream. Dad would chuckle.