Watching the Red Sox go into St. Louis with a 2-0 lead is like watching Janet Leigh go into the shower.

If you’re a Red Sox fan, you know what I’m talking about. Every time your team starts to look as if it’s in a can’t-lose situation, you start hearing what sounds like the distant sound of screeching violins.

We are beings made up of memories, and yours are of misery. You’re up 2-0, and that part of you in which hope continues to cling to its tenuous foothold throbs with the beat of God’s own subwoofer. But that other, far larger part, that houses the acid residue of relentlessly shattered dreams, remembers that you’ve been here before, felt hope before, got crushed before.

It was 18 years ago, in 1986, and you remember it as if it were yesterday. Your Sox beat the Mets two straight in Shea to open the Series. You were going back to Fenway. You were going to bury the cursed curse.

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And then ... is it really necessary to say “Bill Buckner” again?

So you know that no time is more dangerous than the one your beloved idiots are facing now. As much as you feel in the marrow of your bones that this really is the year when the agony ends, memory warns you that it’s still too soon to look ahead, too early to put a magnum of bubbly in the fridge.

What worries you most is how easy it has looked. The Red Sox have tried their darndest to give these games away. At times they’ve looked as if they think they’re playing soccer and the more you boot the ball, the better it is. They’ve committed eight errors in two games, which is giving the St. Louis Cardinals, the best offensive team in the National League, 31 outs a game. Bill Mueller joined Willie Davis of the ’66 Dodgers in committing three in one game.

You can’t give teams like the Cards four extra outs and expect to win. And yet, beyond explanation, your guys won both games. St. Louis had five outs in the sixth inning, thanks to Mueller’s manos de piedras, and Curt Schilling, with blood staining his sock, still didn’t let them score.

Could it be that finally all the breaks you didn’t get over the past 86 years are going to even out?

You think back on the Yankee series, on being down 0-3 and two runs down in Game 4 with Mariano Rivera on the mound. You won. Similar situation in Game 5. You won again. In Game 6, the umps huddled up and made two huge calls in your favor, one on Bellhorn’s home run, the other on A-Rod’s Little-League slap at Bronson Arroyo’s glove.

And now in the World Series, four errors helped the Cardinals score six runs in Game 1, allowing them to make up first a five-run deficit and then a two-run deficit. And still you won, and you didn’t even need extra innings to do it. In Game 2, four more errors went up on the board and still the mighty Cards scored just twice.

Then there are the things your hitters are doing. They scored six times in Game 2, and every run crossed the plate with two outs. If there is one thing the Red Sox defeats seared in your memory have in common, it’s that the other guys always get the two-out hits and your guys never get them — not when you really, really need them.

Finally, you have Keith Foulke, who so far is not being confused with Calvin Schiraldi. He threw three straight days against the Yankees, flung 100 pitches at the formerly feared Bronx Bombers, and closed the deal every time. Now, he’s doing it again. Twice he’s come into the game in the eighth inning. Twice the Sox have won.

And now it’s Pedro ready to take the hill, Pedro who surely has one more win in a right arm that has won so many for you. But when Pedro pitches, all you can think about is whether Terry Francona is going to pull a Grady and leave him in there when the pitch count crawls up around 105 and one hit will ruin the day.

The Cardinals are great in their own park. All four of their NLCS wins came there. And your team doesn’t play nearly as well on the road as it does in Fenway.

So you can’t relax. The Cardinals could take three. You know it. You feel it. You fear it. You pray for one win, and you pray that it comes in Game 3. You know too well how easy it is for momentum to swing. The pendulum was on your side last week, but how long can it stay there.

You’re a mess right now with all of this running through a psyche bruised and battered over the years. You think this is the year. You fear it’s another cruel joke. You’ve got to go to work or to school while this is going on. But you’re not going to pay much attention.

Who can think with those violins screeching?

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