I’ve always wondered what a fan club meeting of Omen fans would be like. Would we all begin by standing up and dramatically yelling, “I’ve always belonged to him!”? Would our leader have dark hair with a severe side part and possess no sense of humor? Would some members dress all in black, and listen to Anthrax and Bauhaus on their iPods? Would some of the girls sit in the back and giggle, pining for the 1978 model Jonathan Scott-Taylor? Would anyone care if I burped (that’s private school for ya)? 

The great thing about being an Omen fan is there doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast rules. Sure, there are the self-proclaimed “Goths” and “metal-heads”, and there’s always the JSTeam (as we will call them from now on). But then there’s everybody else. Us regular Joes who wander the streets and stores, blending in at the produce department and in our offices, and our kids’ preschools. We look like the kind of folk who watch every incarnation of Law & Order and American Idol. But rubbing up against our Bo Bice and Carrie Underwood CD’s are the soundtracks to all three of the first Omen films. We have—sequestered away, lest it make contact with some poor soul’s bare hands—the Omen IV DVD. We have posters in sturdy black frames. 8 x 10 prints from the films. All the paperbacks. We know what it is like to walk through Target looking for detergent and paper towels and catch ourselves humming, Ave Satani.

“What?” We ask the curious matron passing us in the Health & Beauty aisle, giving us the fish eye. “Problem?”

Sometimes, our outward everyday-ness and total lack of obviousness makes us all the weirder.

“I heard you were a writer,” one of my son’s therapists said recently, her voice filled with relief. Yeah, that’s it, I thought, smiling. At the time it wasn’t Omen stuff, it was 70’s memorabilia, and you’d have thought she’d found an explanation justifying the relatively fresh severed head she’d discovered. She had probably gotten together with the other therapists to talk about the pet rock and the beaded curtain, so magnificent in its shades of yellow, red, light maroon and orange. The overall effect was that of a shimmering, bejeweled river of puke. I was dazzled the first time I saw it.

“I feel dizzy,” I told the clerk, my voice soft with awe.

“We have some in the back,” she said, “Would you like one?”

“Like one?” I repeated, “I want to be one. I might even want to @#%$ one!”

My history of dorkiness goes back—all the way back to my negligent mother parking my playpen in front of the TV to watch Dark Shadows and Lost in Space. As I got older I eventually acquired the Barnabas Collins/Dark Shadows game, which our ill-mannered Weimaraner ate and festively *$#@ all over our backyard. Sigh. Show dogs.

The die had been cast. I was programmed to be dorky. My two favorite records were the original Broadway soundtrack to Camelot and Walt Disney’s Chilling Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House. If it was bad, freaky or weird (or destined to be in the air for less than five episodes), I managed to find it. Daktari (even the theme music is awful). F-Troop.  Quark (Quark was so short-lived that I got up to take a leak and when I got back it was gone). I found all the “genre”-type shows: Star Trek. Night Gallery (aka—the years I never slept at night). I idolized Tim Conway, Paul Lynde, and Foster Brooks (he of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts—the one who always pretended to be drunk). It should be noted here that I am female.

So The Omen, really, is my ascent into normalcy. A vast step-up from my childhood goal of being on the Match Game panel (“KC is a huge BLANK”). It’s an improvement over my high school yearbook prophecy, which reads—and I quote—“Accepts the position of special effects coordinator for the movie ET Encounters Dr. Who”. Not everyone can have their dorkish ways preserved within the confines of handcrafted leather, ya know.

So why is being an Omen fan better? For one thing, most people know what it is (“Oh. Oh…”). There’s no need to explain it (as a 70’s-phile, you’d be surprised how many once-common things now require lengthy explanations). I am not a fan of the lengthy explanation. I prefer everyone be on board and go from there. The Omen films can be discussed just as they are, or can open up the floor for religious debate (try that with your average horror flick). And because it is a trilogy (rumor has it there was a fourth film—ahem) fans can discuss which film is better (the first), which Damien (again, the first—lighten up, Sam), which score (not the one that burps—which sounds strange, coming from me), etc.

So what would go on at a fan club meeting? It might be a little like school, since so many of us associate these films with our youth. Most people would want to talk about the original (the popular kid). The girls in the back would get silly over the cute boy (II). III (the flaky mean kid) would get some flak. The remake would be a hot topic (new kids are always a curiosity). And then there’s IV (the bitch-slut-loser we all know and deliciously bad-mouth the moment their back is turned).  Have we always belonged to them? Indeed, with each year, for some of us, we barely remember a time when we didn’t.