Your odd childhood fears

Down escalators. I don't know why, but as a kid -- from ages 5-10 or so -- you couldn't get me to go on a down escalator. No way. I was fine going up, but I was taking the elevator or stairs back down.

 

Jellyfish. Esp. the ones in the Chesapeake Bay. The sting of those bastards was downright painful.

 

My daughter had escalator fears. Which became my problem when we had to walk all around the outer ramps of the Jones Dome instead of taking convenient escalators to our seats for the N'Sync concert. I never appreciated beer sales more.

 

My uncle's toilet. It reminded me of the one in the Gremlins movie where one of the gremlins jumped out of it. I feared one would jump out of his. Weird I know. What can I say? I'm still kind of creeped out by his bathroom.

 

I got lost while camping with the folks when I was younger. I went to go to one of the outhouses that was a short walk from the tent site and went I started my way back, I completely forgot which way to go to get back.

I was walking around for awhile until I finally found our car.

Until this day, I always get freaked out when I get lost somewhere.

 

The singing animal robots at Chuck E. Cheese.

 

There's not a year goes by that I don't read about an escalator accident involving some bastard kid that could've been easily avoided had some parent -- I don't care which one -- but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect that escalator!

 

This is going to sound extremely weird - we had three of those in the neighbourhood I grew up in and my friends and I would sometimes lie on top of them, flat on our stomachs. We would lower our heads so our lips were right on the edge of the top......and we would race gobs of spit down the side of the box. The spit had to come out of our lips right at the top - couldn't be projected down - and slide all the way to the bottom. First gob to the cement base won the race. Is that some sick shit or what?

And my odd childhood fear? Bees, wasps, hornets. Collectively, they are now my odd adult fear.

 

One of my most vivid memories was a direct result of watching the Thriller video, thus leading to my odd childhood fear.

Some background: My grandmother was raised by her aunt, who with her husband owned a dry cleaners. So, during the summer, I'd get to spend a lot of time with granny (yes, Granny of ladder fame) at the cleaners. After watching the Thriller video, I had a terrible nightmare of those monsters chasing me through the clothes.

Thus, I still have a little fear of going to the cleaners.

My foot was also mauled by a pit bull when I was about seven or eight, causing a still potent fear of dogs.

 

Stinging insects.

 

That's funny...not b/c I laugh at your wimpiness (well, I do ), but b/c it reminds me of a date I had with the sister of one of my best friends. She (the sister, not my friend) and I had always flirted and had made out a few times, all without my best friend or their crazy religious zealot dad finding out.

But instead of cashing out my chips, I insist on pushing my luck. The last week of my senior year, I ask her out and we end up going to the local pond for a picnic or some goofy 1991-esque shit. We go for a walk in the woods behind the pond, holding hands. I'm expecting to at least get caught in a rundown between second and third. Instead, once it gets dark, we realize we have no fucking clue where we are. We're walking around and around in circles and we're both getting stressed out...her b/c we're lost in the dark, me b/c we're lost in the dark and she has to be back at like 9:30 or something and I figure the jig is up and her dad and my friend will take turns killing me.

Eventually, somehow, miraclously, we stumbled out on to the street leading up to the pond and hauled ass getting back to the car. A night that began with hopes of a rundown between second and third ended with a weak-ass pop out to short. But we had some fun later in the summer, when we didn't go anywhere near that fucking pond.

 

the top of staircases. When I was growing up I could look out from my bed and see the top of the stairs. After I watched Pet Cemetery all I could picture was some accident victim walking up the stairs and staring at me. It's a stretch of a connection, but fuck if I wasn't traumatized.