Hahaha kehkehkeh … Can you hear it in your head—the theme of death from Friday the 13th? If you can’t, I know someone who can, Walt G. He’s a fourth grader, so I’m leaving his last name off for privacy purposes. Despite being so young, Walt loves the Friday the 13th movies and particularly loves the villain, Jason Voorhees.
I decided to talk to Walt for my blog, because it’s not every day that you run into a kid who every Friday insists on wearing a TGIF Tshirt featuring an infamous hockey mask. Recently he’s added a new shirt still featuring the hockey mask but emblazed with the words Killin’ It. He said that his teachers are very worried about him wearing the shirts. “I’m not going to do anything like Jason,” Walt said.
He also said that none of his friends and fellow students get weirded out by it either. It seems to be part of his charm. Jason isn’t his only creepy obsession. Walt has recently started enjoying the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s, which is about possessed animatronic animals at a shuttered children’s restaurant. He assured me that it’s as creepy as it sounds, but it doesn’t bother him too much in daylight.
Walt admitted that at night he’s like any other kid. In the darkness, the real monsters might be lurking, and he doesn’t want anything to do with that. “I’ve woke up at like 3 a.m. before. It’s not my thing,” he said.
With his apprehension about late night hours, I asked him why he liked Jason so much. Walt replied, “He wears a hockey mask.” I pointed out that he wore a sack over his head in one movie that only had a single eyehole cut out. “That’s okay too,” he said.
Like so many people who love the slasher movie franchises, Walt has a favorite kill. “I remember these people were camping. Jason grabbed them up in their sleeping bags and slammed them against a tree.” He was a little excited talking about that scene.
In the course of the interview, it came out that Walt has difficulty tying his shoes and goes around with them untied a lot. Of course this makes tripping a very likely possibility. When asked if he was aware that tripping and falling down was the number one way that Jason got you in the movies, he laughed and shook his head, appearing unafraid of that scenario.
Walt isn’t a fan of all scary movies, however. The recent version of It didn’t sit well with him, and he stopped watching it after only a few minutes of encountering the new Pennywise. The night before our interview, he’d been introduced to Aliens. He said that he liked that movie okay, but it wasn’t Friday the 13th.
So if you are ever worried that kids these days can’t appreciate the classics, don’t be. Kids like Walt are out there, loving the modern classic monsters and getting into things like Five Nights at Freddy’s, which promises to be a great segue into the love of horror.