10.28.2012

Sentimental Sunday: Childhood Fears

I won't lie, I'm a bit of a sissy.  I can't watch horror movies, I slept with a night light until I moved in with Corey, and I scare easily.  So since Halloween is coming up I thought I'd write about the random stuff that scared me as a kid.
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--The movie Labyrinth.  Yes, the vaguely ridiculous '80's movie featuring David Bowie in obscenely tight pants.  Why was I scared of this movie?  Well, my first sister was born when I was about three and a half, and I hated her.  I didn't want a little sister at all.  By the time I was about five, I still didn't like her.  So my grandmother made me watch Labyrinth, because it's basically a lesson about what'll happen to you if you don't want your siblings.  It scared the crap out of me, and I stopped hating my sister.  I was terrified that if I was mean to her I'd have to fight the Goblin King and I felt like that wouldn't end well for me.  I stayed scared of this movie for a long, long time; I didn't watch it again until I was in college.  It doesn't bother me anymore but as a kid, wow.  Incidentally, when my second sister was born my first sister hated her, so my grandma used the same tactic.  But my second sister loved the movie so . . . backfire!

--Grasshoppers.  I hate grasshoppers.  To this day I'm scared of them and disgusted by them.  When I was a kid, probably like 6 or 7, I was playing in our front yard.  I remember I was wearing one of the dresses my grandma made me, and it was pale in color, I think yellow.  And all of a sudden out of nowhere, this GIGANTIC grasshopper (seriously, this thing was HUGE) jumped out of the dirt and landed on my chest.  And he was looking up at me and I was yelling, and he spit tobacco stains on my dress that never came out. I think my dad probably came to my rescue but I've hated grasshoppers since then.

--The movie E.T.  There's no good story behind this one--it just scared the crap out of me.  I haven't watched it since I was a kid and I don't intend to, because I'm still scared of it.  Something about E.T. is just terrifying in my opinion, and that scene at the end where him and the kid are both in the hospital really disturbed me.  I don't know why.  This is one of those things that one I tell people about it I get made fun of.

--Fire and snakes.  Not related to each other at all, just two things I went through random phobias of.  The fire one was from a TV movie I saw where a dad lit his kids' bed on fire.  Snakes, I'm not really sure, because we never had a snake problem at our house or anything so . . . yeah.  Who knows.

--Bad weather.  This is probably partially a result of growing up in Arizona, where we rarely have rain or hail or snow, and where we never have tornadoes or hurricanes or earthquakes or anything like that.  I remember as a kid, I loved rain, but if it got too heavy or started hailing I'd freak out.  For the most start this doesn't phase me anymore, but I'm still afraid of tornadoes, and will never live somewhere they're common.
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Those are all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are more!

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