1. Drawbridges. They were apt to open up suddenly, while you were right in the middle.
2. Foxes. They were cunning and evil and just waiting until your guard was down, so they could stalk and eat you.
3. Lava. It might spew out of any slope with no notice, and race downhill to burn your feet off, and then where would you be?
4. My dead step-grandmother. I'm sure that someone meant well when they told me she was looking down on me from heaven.
5. Driving unawares. I'd be navigating a busy dream-intersection, and suddenly realize that I didn't know how to drive.
6. Driving unawares in underwear. Always where Meighan Boulevard and Noccalula Road met -- the widest, busiest intersection in town. And me in my slip.
7. Every monster from Jonny Quest. But particularly that huge robot spider.
8. Accidentally poking my little brother's brains out. I was warned about the soft spot on a baby's head, but in my mind it was a paper-thin membrane that I was constantly in danger of breaking.
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I was tagged by the Shady Gardener for the "8 Random Things" meme, but since I'd already done the "5 Random Things" I decided to change it to the "8 Childhood Fears" meme, which I just made up.
So, what scared you as a kid?
Sharks coming up from the grates in swimming pools.
ReplyDeleteNo, really. It makes perfect sense when you think about it - there are underground aquifers and rivers and things, right? So, *in theory* a shark could *possibly* find its way to an underwater hole in the ocean floor and then into an underground waterway and then, getting totally disoriented and cranky for the lack of salt, try and force its way up through the grate in the bottom of a swimming pool which, as we all know, is where water for the pools comes from.
Mine was a landlocked childhood, can you tell? To this day beaches give me the shivers.
The Blob and the giant octopus from "20,000 Leaques Under The Sea". I figured they could just pop up anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI was terrified of a man who lived at the corner of our street. He used to yell at kids who stepped on his lawn. I was about six and the kids in the neighbourhood told me that this man tried to steal kids and locked them in his basement. My parents were furious with my older brother for telling me this because I wouldn't walk by the corner house to get to school.
ReplyDeleteThe dark, losing my mother in a big store or on the street, thunder, rain that wouldn't stop, never again being pretty after getting the German measles all over my face.
ReplyDeleteThe dark (being the last one downstairs, turning out the light and having to head upstairs to bed), the sound of airplanes at night (my dad used to watch all the WWII documentaries), the boogie monster under the bed, and a reoccurring dream... wandering the halls in a University Building and either not finding the right classroom or finding out I'd been enrolled in a class I didn't know about and entering that classroom on the day of the final. hmmm...
ReplyDeleteThanks Rurality... great twist! :-)
Your point of view writing style reminds me a great deal of Sue Hubbell's book A Country Year, and I've read it numerous times, so you should understand that I like your style, Queen of all Blogs!
ReplyDeleteWow. You nailed a lot of these. But you left out the flying monkeys and the old witch mocking Dorothy as she gazed into that crystal ball. "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" Mommmmeeeee !!!!
ReplyDelete(What a great idea, Rurality. Pablo is right )
Thanks for commenting y'all, these are great!
ReplyDeletePablo, I'm not familiar with her, I'll have to check it out. Now if only I could get my husband to start calling me your majesty... :)
My mother once told me that if I swallowed cat hair, it would turn into worms in my stomach. Have no idea WHY she told me that. Anyway...best friend down the street had many cats and I would be scared at night, trying to sleep while thinking, "Was that a worm I felt?" Seriously. I tease my mom all the time about the therapy I need. LOL
ReplyDeleteFor me, it was mannequins. Especially the ones that were missing hands or :::shudder::: where the fingers were broken off, and you could SEE up inside there. The bronzed, rough-hewn mannequin in the Craftsman Tool section at Sears (who had no face) was double-extra scary.
ReplyDeleteI had a picture window in my childhood bedroom and my bed lay alongside it. I was afraid to look at it at bed time because I knew either a huge alien eye or a dinosaur would be peering in.
ReplyDeletePS: the invisible energy monster on JQ was pretty scary too.
Polio We (my husband and I went to the same one room school) had a classmate die after being ill only a short time. Both of us had the same fear each time we were sick. I remember feeling relief when the vaccine was introduced.
ReplyDeleteWow. You really opened a childhood Pandora's box here! Cool.
ReplyDeletePretty amazing how children have those universal anxieties. I suppose there's some evolutionary benefit to all that angst.
I love the baby one! That has been a lifelong irrational fear of mine - that I would somehow poke my fingers through a baby's fontanelles. I know better, but still... that's why it's called an irrational fear, I suppose!
ReplyDeleteThese are great.
-Some prisoner/mean man under my bed waiting to cut my feet off if I sit down! (Thanks Aunt Carla!)
ReplyDelete-Railroad tracks and being hit by a train that would "sneak up on me"(Again, credit to Aunt Carla)
-Heights
-That the yard would be a foot deep with slithering snakes, but I would still have to walk thru them to the school bus!
-Tornados (went through one at age 3, vivid memories followed by nightmares)
-Those darn flying monkeys!
-Birds from "The Birds"
Heh...sure is comforting to be a grownup! Fun post!
Some inventive illustrator could do such a cool book on all of these...
ReplyDelete