Were You Obsessed with Titanic as a Kid?
Asking on behalf of eight-year-old me
When I was in second grade, my friend Mark (who often played Scary Spice to my Baby Spice at recess) saw Titanic in theaters. He reported the following:
Everyone died.
Especially everyone in third class.
You could get pregnant from kissing.
I was obviously in awe that his parents let him see a PG-13 movie and that this one film had made him so wise. An iceberg! Boobs! Just hearing about it was exhilarating.
But, of course, it also made me anxious.
At eight years old, I was hoping to have my first kiss before I turned 20, but I didn’t think I’d be ready to get pregnant until I was at least 22 and owned a red convertible. The idea of drowning didn’t worry me — I’d been swimming in the Pacific Ocean since birth — but the nightmare of freezing to death chilled me to the bone. Not having seen the movie or having any concept of physics, I imagined an iceberg bigger than my elementary school, turning people into icicles with one touch. Boop! Ice. Boop! Frozen. Like some kind of bizarre cartoon fairy.
Driven by determination to avoid falling for any false “unsinkable” advertising in the future, I started absorbing any Titanic stuff I could get my hands on.
I’d recently devoured The Bridge to Terabithia, the first book I ever read where (spoiler alert for a book published in 1977) a main character died. I didn’t even know what was possible!
Cracking open anything Titanic-related felt dangerous, but (according to my anxiety) necessary. If the book was written in first person, the odds of the narrator surviving, I thought, were usually pretty good. If the book was in third person, it was anyone’s funeral.
After memorizing the Titanic’s morbid timeline — the part where the California turned its radios off!! OMG!!! — I could better prepare myself for what the characters were going to go through. When a young Irish girl happily settled into steerage with her eight siblings, my heart clenched. If a character noted the band (who would eventually go down with the ship, playing until the last possible moment), I did the mental math of how many hours they had left, how many pages.
Now what good did this do me?
In terms of the kissing-pregnancy debacle, my mom, a former nurse, gave me “the talk” about a year later using illustrated, scientifically accurate pamphlets. So that theory was debunked. All good.
Around that same time, I saw Titanic the movie on an airplane. It was still the days where every single person watched the same movie at the same time on the back of the seat in front of them, and a brief message at the beginning stated that the movie has been edited to fit a PG rating. So, no boobs, no blood.
I’d prepared. I’d read books. I’d seen the Titanic exhibit at the Maritime Museum in San Pedro. I had one of those pens where a teeny plastic Titanic floated backwards and forwards, hitting the iceberg and then being spared from the accident, again and again. I researched so I’d be ready.
Surprising to no one, the movie still ruined me. I sobbed and sobbed. A flight attendant came to check on me. “It’s Leo,” I said. She nodded, she understood.
Why did I research the events of the Titanic as a second grader?
The term that comes closest to explaining my behavior, to me, is “morbid curiosity.” Kind of like self inflicted exposure therapy from your living room. It was the first time (I remember) doing it, and it would most certainly not be my last.
I’ve read way too much about school shootings and concentration camps and Princess Diana’s car crash. After a family member passed away, I studied the funeral industry. When Covid peaked, I studied the Black Plague.
And when I heard the news of Ocean Gate (yes, I’m so sorry, that’s where this is going), the teeny tiny not even legally large enough to be a submarine sub that was lost in the Atlantic this past week, I studied the ocean.
It did not bring me comfort.
I will spare you the details.
One look at my TikTok FYP tells me I’m not the only person fixating on the situation.
If you’re out there too, horrified, or maybe feeling guilty that you’re not horrified enough … I guess I just want to let you know it’s normal. Our brains YEARN to prepare us for ANYTHING, so it makes sense that you’re running through what you would do if you were in that situation or contemplating all of the insane, unpredictable turns of events that would have to happen for you to be in that situation ever.
It’s okay to take it personally, especially if it’s been your main fuel for doom-scrolling the past few days.
Those poor people (ironic, no?) passed on in an unimaginable way. So, obviously, our brains want to imagine it as much as possible.
HOT TIP
If the Ocean Gate stuff starts to bother you to a point where it’s starting to feel unhealthy, put a timer on for 30 seconds, or.a minute if you’re WILD, and write down things you’re grateful for.
Sounds cliché, but being inundated with absolutely batshit terrifying facts about the ocean can really put things in perspective!
Like, I’ve never been so thankful for my fear. I mean, I’m too scared to go on ROLLERCOASTERS. Last week, I went to a drawing class in a “haunted” bar and had to hold my pee because I was too afraid to get spooked on the way to the bathroom. Thank you, fear. Sometimes, you piss me off (like why can’t I just sing in public without getting a tummy ache?), but I guess if you’re trying to keep me alive, you’re doing a dandy job.