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How McDonald's French Fries Saved My Life

In order to really tell the little details of my first meeting with Tim Curry (herein referred to as TC), there are some facts, which need to be brought up, in order to understand what happened.

I've shared some of the metaphysical aspects of our, what I felt, was a destined meeting of soul mates. Just the same, my amazing experience at my third visit to RHPS was only the beginning of a five-year journey to meeting the man, who, I must admit, has changed my life in so many ways.

Not too long after realizing my "connection" with TC I started reading books about metaphysics, psychology and 'making dreams come true'. I knew I had to meet this man.

Books came just as I needed them – and proved the adage when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And maybe, that is exactly was TC was or is to me – A teacher.

At the very least, he certainly was a catalyst to the rest of my life -- and even ended up saving my life!

Let me explain my life in 1982 to 1983:

I noticed TC on the movie theater screen – in 1982 -- and began a journey which nearly ended only about a year later.

During this year, a skinny girl by nature, I fell into the horror of anorexia nervosa. Between the ages of 18 to 20-years-old, I went from my high school average of 120 pounds to 105 pounds. Being 5'9" I was, for the most part, a walking skeleton.

Recently graduated from high school and wanting to move to Hollywood to become a "movie star" also threw me into a personal depression. I found myself stuck in my hometown of Phoenix, Arizona living with my over-protective parents.

I had a job as a 'candy girl' at the movie theatre, which I liked, but just minimum wage. I didn't want to go to college immediately. I just wanted to act and be a star.

I had a boyfriend since my junior year and he was going to college nearby, but we hardly saw each other since we graduated high school. We had never had sex in the two years we'd been together because I wanted to wait "until I was married". He respected this; nevertheless, he recently was pressuring me to give it up.

Also, little did he know, I had changed my mind and wanted to lose my virginity -- to someone else! I fell madly in lust for a sixteen-year-old Jewish guy and wanted to gift him with my special gift. He didn't want it, though. Finally, of course, I wanted TC to deflower me if I could track him down!

I started praying to God to help me meet TC, as it would lift my deepening depression. Then my mentor in metaphysical teachings, a woman named Kali Kaufman, reminded me about "telepathy", which I had read about around my sophomore year.

Telepathy is mentally sending a message to a living person in another room, state or country. It was the 80s equivalent of e-mail, I suppose, since we didn't have computers, cell phones, CDs or DVDs! Hell, we had just gotten cable!

I had been quite successful in using telepathy in school. Telepathy requires a sender and a receiver and I experimented with it in high school. Thus, I started to send messages to TC. The first message I recall sending out to him, wherever he may be, was to "get more famous" so I could find him! I even got specific with – do some movies, get in magazines and on TV.

How I did it was to open my Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS) Book and look at a photo of him as Frank N. Furter; I’d put my mental message as a beam of light from my third eye (located in the middle of your forehead) to his third eye. And wow, it worked!!! I started hearing about him all over the place . . . met people who saw him in concert, back in the late 70s. TC was Peter Frampton's opening talent during Frampton’s concerts (in Phoenix, AZ, at least). I met another girl who hung out with TC and his band at a club in Phoenix, when he performed there. A girl at my job had a photo her older sister took when she met Tim Curry in Phoenix doing his tour!!!

Very happy with my results, I started regular conversations with TC, in my mind (of course). And then I visited my local record store, we still listened to LPs; and I found 3 TC albums! Another book I had read also talked about writing down your dreams "as if they already are true". It started immediately. Grabbed my notebook and began a five-year ritual . . . which I called "Fantasy Letters to TC".

My Dearest Tim . . .

It came flowing from my beautiful handwriting. [I still have beautiful handwriting; my teachers always complimented me on this talent] . . . and I wrote pages and pages to TC as if I already knew him! This is only an example (and a guess) of what they were like -- as these letters, never sent, are in my files somewhere and not with me.

My Dearest Tim . . .

Thank you so much for your call the other day; it was great hearing your voice for the first time on the phone. I cannot believe I'll be seeing you in a month. I still find it hard to believe those big metal things can fly; my first airplane ride! Yes, I know you will be there with me in spirit.
As I was writing free flow and had my TC albums playing, I fell into a bit of fantasy and imagining him reading my letter, as I wrote it. Then, it came time for me to sign it, and in the fading chorus of "S.O.S." I heard, clearly, TC telling me . . .

"Make contact the way we always did before."

In my mind I asked him, "You mean like this?"

And his voice started repeating "S.O.S. Save Our Souls . . . S.O.S.O.S. Angel . . . S.O.S."

When I woke, as I had fallen asleep hearing this, or was in a trance -- I had signed my "fantasy letter":

Love,
Always Your Angel . . .
In this timeframe, I also wrote a poem to TC called "Fantasy Man"

Off-hand, I only can recall the first verse at this writing. There are several copies in my storage in California or Florida.

Fantasy Man

Fantasy Man on the screen above;
Fantasy Man, one that so many grow to love!
How can it be it happened to me?
When in your life, I can't possibly be?

Then something really wild happened, which, in a way, scared me, but confirmed to me – TC and I would meet one day. After this moment, I never truly doubted it again.

It was one of the very hard days of my depression. I was in my room and praying for God to "take me home" because I "didn't want to live this life anymore". I was crying hysterically…

In the midst of this anguish, a clear message came to me, I NEED HELP OR I AM GOING TO HURT MYSELF! I went to my window and tried to put my arms through the glass. It wouldn’t break, so I hit harder, figuring if I did this – then I could, indeed, go home with God! The tears and my beating of the glass were so intense, I could not see through the tears.

My bedroom door securely locked and the parents out at work; without words, a man grabbed my arms, pulled me from the window into the middle of my room. I fell into his strong arms and laid on his chest, he rocked me in this spot in my room. As my sobbing slowed and I felt his warm arms holding me – and suddenly, in shock, I became aware there was no one of that description in my home!
I jumped away to look at the intruder, so gently holding me.

I saw Tim Curry STANDING IN MY ROOM; he looked at me with those eyes … just as suddenly, as I blinked, he . . . the aspiration . . . the telepathic beam, whatever or whoever he was . . . disappeared! I fell on the floor, covering my eyes and breathing hard.

"No way!”

I looked up and the room was normal.

"Tim, were you here?!"

No answer. A sudden warm feeling again went around my shoulders, from behind.

It shook me up and I decided to leave the room for a while, to think this through.

Someone was there – certainly did look like TC. I thought it was his astral self, perhaps, traveling to a troubled fan at the right time? Or was it just the hallucinations of a young troubled girl with anorexia -- who needed to be held. I guess I can never be sure – but, I knew, one day, I'd meet TC . . . I had to meet him.

As my 20th birthday was nearly upon me . . . my anorexia still my secret (hid it under over-sized t-shirts); I had a new love -- my boyfriend, Nick. We had an agreement, though --when we got married (Nick and I), he'd allow me have a long-term fling with Tim Curry as long as I let him have one with Stevie Nicks. We were agreed!

Not too long after my birthday celebration, as my boyfriend and mother started noticing me getting thinner . . . I came home from work one day feeling a bit nauseous, ate a little something and went to the bathroom and passed out. When I came to, my stomach hurt like a thousand swords stabbing me. I tried to stand to walk and collapsed where I stood. I dragged myself to the living room where my little cousin, Sherry, aged 10, called an ambulance for me. My mother drove up about that time, before an ambulance could be dispatched – Sherry and my mother got me to the car. Mom rushed me to the ER at Maryvale Hospital.

I was diagnosed with appendicitis and taken into surgery. And the weirdest thing happened. The paramedics who met us at the door were two young men. One of them LOOKED JUST LIKE TIM CURRY, I will call him "Steve"!

Even though I was in severe pain, I tried to act all together for Steve. I told him he looked just like Tim Curry and asked him if he'd come see me after I got out of surgery. He promised he would!

It was my first surgery. When I woke up in recovery, for some weird reason, I couldn't open my eyelids . . .they felt so damn heavy! The nurse and my mother were encouraging me to try to open them, but I didn't want to and felt so tired. Then my mother said, "Steve is here, Angela!"

My eyes flew wide open and Steve wheeled my gurney to my room. As I insisted on Steve helping me into the bed, I felt the breeze as my sheet came off of me. Steve covered me and said goodbye. I still felt cold, looked under my sheet and realized I was completely nude!

I was then so embarrassed and told my mother, "I wish I had remembered to shave my legs!"

In the hospital for three days – Nick, my supposed boyfriend, didn't once come to visit me and I was devastated. The surgeon also said something bizarre during my after surgery evaluation.

"That's strange; her appendix weren't very swelled up for acute appendicitis."

I still felt bizarre after the surgery, but went back to work, weak, depressed and no longer speaking to Nick. Everyone noticed I was too pale and thin. At work, and I hadn't eaten in five days, I was feeling cramps (I had a little tiny surgical site where they removed my appendix). I went up to the bathroom and was feeling more pain than I had the day I passed out. A co-worker came up and asked if I was all right. I told her no and to get the manager. The manager asked if I wanted him to drive me home or back to the hospital. I asked to go home.

At home, still in pain, which was getting very, very severe; I finally hurled and felt 100% better . . . for about ten minutes.

Suddenly, like a freight train hit me right in the abdomen – pained surged through my body and I screamed like a dying animal. My father was lost as to what to do as I screamed – Mom not home and my cousin, Vince in his room. I would learn, much later, Vince called for an ambulance; although he never came out to the living room to tend to me.

As the paramedics arrived, so did my mother; the paramedics came in I begged for a gun to end my misery; I kept trying to force myself to pass out. But, the paramedics wouldn't let me sleep and asked me questions. As they announced my blood pressure at 90 over 60 and going down – an ambulance rushed me to a different hospital, St. Joseph’s. The very hospital I came into this world.

Emergency surgery revealed a ruptured ovarian cyst, which destroyed both the ovary and fallopian tube on one side; so I had everything removed on one side.

We’d learn, then, the appendix was never acute and didn’t need to be removed (too late now, though, it was gone). It had been a cyst the whole time. I had also formed a cyst in one of my breasts. The hospital was afraid to give me another surgery because I was much too thin and anemic and they felt I could die on the table.

Eventually, the cyst was removed and my weight went down some more. I ended up in the hospital for another month and diagnosed with "malnutrition" (because anorexia wasn't famous enough yet). I looked like one of those starving orphans in the third world nations! I was fully emaciated and my body was eating my muscles in my legs. My once plump cheeks were sunken in and my veins, which they were feeding me through via tubes . . . kept collapsing. They were trying to find veins in my legs and feet!

At this point, there had been no solid food in my mouth or body for over a month. And the two or three times I tried to eat a green bean my throat would close immediately.

Finally, as I lay dying, my wish to "go home to God" coming true, the doctor came in and told my mother and me, "Tell your daughter she's going to die. And Angela, tell your mother what you want to be buried in, because I can't help you anymore!"

He walked out the room, leaving us stunned.

My mother, suddenly calm for the first time in months, said, "Well, Angela, I don't want you to go. And I know this, if you don't eat, you'll never know if you could've met Tim Curry or become a movie star. But, I know for a fact, if you die, you won't do either."

Because I hadn't eaten much for three months in total, but nothing in a month; and girls, with anorexia, you also lose your appetite completely – I did have one, only one, very slight craving . . . McDonald's french fries!!

Against the doctor's orders, my mother brought a bag of McDonald's french fries into my room.

My mother understood me better than the doctor – who said I shouldn’t eat french fries. She brought the fries in her purse. I ate two and a half or three french fries, that’s all I could tolerate. At the weigh-in, the doctor none the wiser about the fries was encouraged that I had gained one ounce my appetite beginning to come back, a little bit. They sent me home to recover.

It did take another year for me to learn to eat normal again, and two years of anemia.

Still, Tim Curry and McDonald's french fries saved my life.

My mother's words made me think, yeah . . . I'd like to meet TC and become a movie star; and I would have to live to do it!

Impressum

Widmung:
To all those who have big dreams.

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