You Know You’re Obsessed With Labyrinth When…

 

(The ones in peach are the ones I’ve done!)

 

1. Every time you see a doorknocker you wait for it to say, “It’s very rude to stare!”
2. You have the urge to “chilly down” every time you see any kind of fire.
3. You find a line from the movie to fit any random occasion.
4. You ban the words “It’s a piece of cake!” from your vocabulary and if you accidentally say them wait for a disaster.
5. Your mom says that the maids are coming to clean your room, you shout, “Oh no! The Cleaners!” and run screaming in terror in the opposite direction.
6. For Halloween you hold a masquerade ball with ATWFD (As The World Falls Down) as the one and only song, keeping a lookout for a certain Goblin King.
7. You throw a tantrum cause he didn’t show.
8. You speak politely to every beggar you meet.
9. You thoroughly scare every beggar you meet by bowing and saying, “Your Majesty! What a nice surprise!”
10. Every time you go through a cave or go by cliffs or mountains you wait for the rocks to start warning you to “beware” and “go back.”
11. You drag out all the stuff you don’t play with or use anymore into your backyard, hoping Agnes the Junk Lady will come visit you.
12. Someone insults or taunts or challenges you, you say, “You’re no match for me.”
13. You move through the Labyrinthine streets of your neighborhood marking sidewalk squares with lipstick, hoping to hear the tile-dweller.
14. Every time you throw a party, you ask, “Anyone want to play a game of Scrabble?”
15. Even if you already have them, you go out and buy extra copies of Snow White and Where the Wild Things Are and then spend the day thinking of everyone’s favorite dwarf and big furry friend.
16. You tell your mother, “You are a wicked stepmother from a fairy story!”
17. Even if you’re considered “too old”, you go out and buy a teddy bear and call him Lancelot.
18. You’re surrounded by bullies, you shout defiantly, “I shall fight you all to the death!”
19. Every time you come to a T section or some such corridor choice, you ask, “Would you go left or right?”
20. Every time someone says the word “fiery” or “fire” you immediately think of those wacky, crazy, partying creatures with a fetish for detachable body parts.
21. You immediately run out of your house or movie theater at full speed after the end of Laby scanning the skies for white owls and shouting, "Jareth! You have power over me! I wanna see my dreams! You can rule me! Jareth! Jareth!"
22. You buy every large urn you can find, hoping it will lead you to the hedge maze.
23. A friend is planning to do something insane, you shout, "What? Call out the guards! Don't just stand there, do something! She must be stopped! Move!"
24. Your parting words to all your friends and in all your letters are, "Remember, should you need me, for any reason..."
25. You name your baby brother Toby just so you and Sarah can have something in common.
26. You name your baby sister Toby.
27. You run up a huge therapy bill when your folks want to know exactly why you've named your sister Toby and why you're wishing a Goblin King would take her away right now.
28. Your e-mail address, if you have one, is directly Labyrinth-related
29. You tape every talk show you know even if you hate it on the off chance that David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Toby Froud, or Terry Jones will be on it.
30. You fight with your principal to have ATWFD played at every single dance.
31. You win.
32. Every time you see a brick wall that seems to go on forever, you walk up to it and are totally surprised when you can’t walk through it.
33. Your science project is to build a maze and train a mouse to run to the center. You build a castle at the center and insert all kinds of openings and traps and dress the cheese up as Jareth and totally traumatize the mouse by trying to dress it up as Sarah (The traumatized mouse refuses to run the maze and stands shaking uncontrollably, squeaking with fright and running away from you as fast as it can on its little mouse legs).
34. You feel there should be a Muse of Music named Jareth
35. You get the lead in a musical, and you just pretend that the guy opposite you is Jareth so you can actually get through the musical instead of just shouting, “Ewwww!”
36. A normal conversation includes the words, “I wish…”
37. Your friends are afraid to anger you for fear you’ll dump them into an oubliette.
38. Your friends are afraid to let you lose in a game for fear you’ll dump them into the BOES, or its equivalent (I knew that five foot deep pit full of garbage would come in handy!)
39. Your friends are afraid of you, period.
40. You no longer have friends…
41. You’re asked to give a speech on the greatest musician or singer, so you pick David Bowie/Jareth.
42. You fail miserably but feel glad that you’ve educated your friends about the Goblin King.
43. You spend all of your allowance on color copies of David Bowie as Jareth and scenes of LABYRINTH and completely cover your walls with them so you won’t have to look at anything else.
44. You spend a whole Mathematics, Science, or Art class arguing with the teacher about the brilliance of Escher’s Relativity and the total relevance it has to this class and lesson
45. You win.
46. Your friends comment on your, uh, unique fashion sense. The long hair, cape, and walking stick are kind of cool, but the crystal ball and the strange amulet?
47. You endanger your life trying to dance on the walls like Jareth in the Escher Room scene.
48. You start to channel Sarah.
49. You start to channel Jareth.
50. You are sent to your room b/c your mom or dad walked in on you kissing the TV.
51. You try to explain what you were doing.
52. You threaten to throw your parents into an oubliette or the BOES.
53. You go out and buy a set of those wind-up teeth, tie them to a stick, and go around threatening your parents with it, yelling, “Nippy nippy nip nip!”
54. You spend the entire session describing the wonder and beauty of LABYRINTH to your shrink.
55. You totally convert your shrink.
56. You sing LABY songs for every audition.
57. You endanger your life running down the stairs to listen to a LABYRINTH song you’ve heard a zillion times.
58. You call A&E to tell them they should do David Bowie’s bio.
59. And Jennifer Connelly’s.
60. You spend hours writing LABYRINTH fanfic and crossovers with your other obsessions, like Les Mis, Phantom, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, etc.
61. Your LABY CD/tape and video/DVD lives in your Discman or Walkman or tape player and VCR or DVD player.
62. You can honestly say some of these apply to you, even the odd ones.
63. Or most of them.
64. Or all of them.
65. You read T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland and write your whole response paper around the line, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” and comparing it to LABYRINTH. You fail the paper.
66. You are asked to teach a class and you base your entire lesson plan around LABYRINTH. Like Psychology (What is the meaning of the Labyrinth and of Jareth and all the characters? What is Sarah exhibiting? Denial of reality? Repression of adulthood?)
67. And Religion (What do you think the goblins represent? And what is significant about the fact that Sarah is a pretty young girl who has not yet had a date? And what does Jareth’s symbol represent?).
68. Even science (decipher the chemical elements of the BOES and chart the flight of an owl at such and such a velocity).
69. Someone goes to England and when they come back you ask, “How was Jareth?” instead of “How was Jarrod?”
70. You're bored in class, so you start saying the whole movie in your head. Or out loud.
71. You plan to make soft toys of Ludo, Sir Didymus, Ambrosious and Hoggle.

 

Again, I’d like to thank Anna Cotton for providing half of this List J

 

 

If you wish to send me a Sign of Obsession, feel free to do so!

ykyowlabyw@yahoo.com

 

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