Have No Doubt - We’re in the Twilight Zone

 

Did you know we are in a Twilight Zone episode?  It’s from season 3 episode 8, “It’s a Good Life” (1961).

I loved the Twilight Zone as a kid.  I remember when I first saw this episode in rerun and was terrified by the premise and how it played out.  It seemed then and now (especially now) that this was the most disturbing and disquieting story I’d seen in that series.  And considering the tone of the show, that is saying a lot!

It’s a small town isolated from the wider world due to the fact there is a 6 year old boy who has god-like powers to control and warp reality to his immature whim.  The adults are terrified of him but try to hide that so as to not upset him.  They must think “happy thoughts” because he can read their minds and sense their intentions.  They are constantly second-guessing themselves about what he may want and how they can avoid running afoul of him.  Whatever he says is immediately acknowledged by them as “a very good thing!”  

When someone says or thinks something he doesn’t like he chides them with “You’re a bad man.  A VERY bad man!” and banishes them to a mysterious place he calls “the cornfield” from which they do not return or turns them into something horrifying which strips them of their humanity.

Does all of this sound strangely familiar?  A situation where a mean-spirited and self-absorbed child demands full acquiescence otherwise he will use his power to punish?  Where otherwise previously sane adults bend and contort themselves to kowtow to his will?  A person that never had to fully mature into an adult due to the distortions of his upbringing where the supreme attribute was to not be said “no” to?

We passed that “sign post up ahead” 10 years ago.

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