Lynn Chamberlain Adams - Histamine and The Exorcist

 

So, my brother, Kent, is a year and a half older than I am. We still had the same sense of humor, so there were a lot of laughs when we were little, but truly, he tortured me. He would hide on me. In my recollection, it was every day, multiple times a day and every single time I would burst into tears, go running, crying. 

 

In those days, you had a TV, one TV, and you would wait for your show to come on each week. So, I would be on the couch because The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was on and I was going to get to see it. He comes in, he changes channel just because he could, you know, you can either get punched or leave, but you're not going to watch your show. 

When I was 14, I'm in the kitchen, got The Funnies, the comic strips on the table on the counter. Kent and his friend, Jimmy, come through the kitchen, and Jimmy stops for a moment and we talk about something in The Funnies. We have a laugh. As they're walking out, he says, “You know, Chamberlain, your sister's okay.” My brother said, “What?” He said, “No, really. She's okay.” That was the last time my brother and I ever fought to this day. We never fought again. We've got each other's back. Everything was great. 

 

Two years after that with The Funnies, The Exorcist came out, the movie. I had read the book the year before. So, one night, I'm home, I'm getting ready for bed, my parents are away. I'm wearing these-- I don't know if anybody has them anymore, they're bloomers with a nightie over them kind of-- [audience laughter] 

 

Male Audience: [00:35:09] [unintelligible [00:35:10] them [audience laughter]

 

Lynn: [00:35:13] And I'm 16. So, anyway. So, I'm getting ready for bed and my parents are away. My brother comes into my room and he said, “I swear to God, you tell anybody this, I will kill you. How many are here?” [audience laughter] I wait. And he said, “You know, we saw The Exorcist tonight and I am scared shitless. I am not sleeping in my room. I'm sleeping in your other bed.” And in that moment, I just felt like everything come into place. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, another piece of this is, is that I have-- it's called dermatographia. It doesn't affect anything, but it just means you have a lot of histamine in your body and you can write on your body. So, you could take a toothpick and do a paisley pattern and it would show up three minutes later as a bright red welt, very well defined against your skin. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I said, “Fine,” whatever. My beds are like this in the corner. I don't know how to say it. They're perpendicular to each other. And I said, “But I'm going to sleep.” He said, “Fine.” So, we turn off the lights and I wait a couple minutes. I had put a bobby pin next to my bed, and I raise up my nightgown and I write, “Help me.” [audience laughter] I waited another three or four minutes. And then, in the dark, I could hear his breathing getting fairly regular and I went [makes coughing noises] [audience laughter]. 

 

You know, the sound a June bug makes when it's bouncing off, like the screen and the wall and the light? He started batting around in the darkness of my room, trying to find the light switch. [audience laughter] He bangs into my desk, he bangs against the other while he hits the light switch and he goes, “Dammit, this is not funny,” and he turns on the light. And I say, “Ken, I don't know what's wrong. Everything feels so weird. I don't know what's happening to me.” [audience laughter] 

 

This is all happening very quickly. He's looking at me and I went, “What's going-- What?” And I lift it up and there it says, “Help me.” [audience laughter] Truly, I'm 58 and this was like the best moment of my life to date. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] I said last two years have been great, but for the first 14, are we even? [audience laughter] And we were even.