I have a complicated relationship with bathrooms. More specifically, I have a complicated relationship with bathrooms at night. Here’s the thing: I have had to pee at roughly 3 a.m. every night since I was born. I hate it. I hate it a lot. I get a little bit mad every time, even though I probably should be used to this routine by now.
When I was around 4 or 5 years old, my parents made me use this bedwetting alarm device called Starry1. Starry was a set of wires and hooks that clipped onto my skin, pajamas, brain, etc., and emitted this shrill beeping noise with the urgency of a World War II air raid siren whenever it detected urine.
A couple years after graduating from Starry Academy™, my relationship to the bathroom at night got even worse when I watched The Sixth Sense.
The Sixth Sense is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main one is this bathroom scene.
This particular jump scare messed me up like no other. It opened my mind to a whole new horrible dimension about going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Forget loud beeping noises – a fucking ghost might be behind you.
It would be approximately 20 years before I would see The Sixth Sense again in full, until about five days ago, when I mustered up the courage to confront my biggest fear once more. Yes, my dear reader, I was once more riding through the Sixth with my woes.
Here are some of the real-time notes I took as I rewatched it:
A man in underwear is a terrifying sight.
Cole has this way of speaking that’s both charming and eerie. Especially when he whispers, he makes a lot of sounds with his mouth and there are these blank spaces between those sounds and those make words – the ghosts of words if you will.2
The kid offering to show Cole his dad’s gun is so scary. I was always afraid of a situation in which a friend would try to show me their dad’s gun—not because I was afraid of the gun, but because I was worried my friend was a ghost.
Vomit girl! She can fuck off!
Like, Al Capone died in Philly right? At that jail? Do you think he’d visit Cole too? You know, that would make a great Substack. Note to save idea for later.
Pretty funny how Cole goes from being a social outcast to getting a lead in a school play. Good for him, I guess.
Wait, but actually, Cole is such a good listener!
Other than that, I spent the whole movie crying. That’s all because of Toni Collette, who plays Cole’s mom. As the father of a cat that zooms around the apartment all agitated, and howls at the window in the dead of night, I totally understand what it’s like to be the mother of a child that can see ghosts. Every time she promised Cole she didn’t think he was a “freak,” I bawled my eyes out, because I literally couldn’t think of a nicer thing a parent could say to their child. I also realized the movie is more about family and love, and that idea alone made me cry harder.
I take that as a sign of my growth. Rewatching The Sixth Sense through the lens of someone who has been through college, gotten a speeding ticket, been unemployed, pulled a hamstring, been late on rent, done their own taxes, gotten bit by a dog, gotten a rabies shot because I got bit by a dog, cried about dying because I thought the rabies shot wouldn’t work, and then lived to tell the tale has completely changed how I view the movie.
I still hate going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and The Sixth Sense still frightens me, but it no longer lurks in the back of my mind like the ghost hiding in the bathroom when I’m taking my 3 a.m. tinkle. I can appreciate it now as a great movie, a wonderful movie in fact. A… perfect movie? It just might be. I still hate vomit girl, though.
I can’t find any information about Starry™ online, like when it was made, who its founders are, whether its founders are in jail, whether it’s been banned – whether it even existed! But I distinctly remember it’s smug- star-shaped mascot with its smug little grin. Maybe that little bastard has been scrubbed from the internet. That’s what I choose to believe.
I have no clue what I meant by this.