Ah, the stuff of childhood trauma and middle-age therapy. Who would we be without it? Probably healthy, sane, and successful. But anyway, lets take a look at what made us into what we are, namely the weirdos and other freaks that our parents warned us about....
Q: What disturbed/frightened you as a kid?
Vibe526@aol.com:
My sister was such a "Mind-F***er" when I was a kid. She'd tell me I'd turn into this if I did that. Scare me at the bottom of stairs by jumping from around the corner.
Also horror movies scared the bejeezus outta me, I couldn't watch one till I was in my teens.
But I'm ok now
II STaN II@aol.com:
vampire teeth, i hated vampires
MeTmbg@aol.com:
lamb chop....that song!!! it still frightens me!!
FTFOI@aol.com:
I was scared of those little Goombas from Super Mario Brothers. I couldn't sleep some nights because I was afraid that they'd sneak up behind me in bed and nibble me to death with razor-sharp teeth. For some reason I pictured them with razor-sharp teeth. I slept on my side until Super Mario Brothers came out. I've slept on my back ever since. I guess I never fully recovered from this Goomba thing....<
HAL9344811@aol.com:
I had this really dark spot in my closet, and when there was a full moon the light came through these holes in my window blinds which made the perfect impression of two glowing eyes sitting in the closet. For a little while I was guinely convinced that when there was a full moon this monster thing surfaced in my closet.
KingGanon@aol.com:
Ewoks. No, really.
dhg5@cornell.edu (David Gold):
Well, one of my first clear memories is of eating some Star Wars cereal, soon after Return of the Jedi came out in theaters. That night, I had a horrible nightmare of Darth Vader standing over my bed and slicing me to ribbons. For a while after that, I slept facing the wall. Not the brightest choice tactically, but it made me feel better.
When I was a little toehead, one of my favorite shows was Thundercats. Later on, of course, I would grow up and discover all the phallic and sexual subtext, and require large amounts of cola to drown my anguish. But at the time, that guy Mummra was pretty scary. I mean, he would come out of his coffin, all dirty and smelly in rags. He had pink eye, eczema, and nasty blackheads. Then he would go wild and start screaming, and you could see all his teeth had rotted away. Bleech. When i went to sleep, my dad would come in and start turning my lights on and off whispering, "Mummra... Mummra..."
On the same note, I didn't want to go see Spaceballs when I was six either, because Pizza the Hutt looked like a giant moving blackhead just waiting to blow. Double bleech.
The Epochs@aol.com:
I think one of the most disturbing and frightening experiences for me was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The Oompa Loompas are Orange and Green Midgets. That explains much. They look like the product of Chernobyl and they function as the story's boogie men. If you don't be good they'll come get you. The tunnel scene is incredibly scary-dead chickens, etc. Nothing for a child to see. The scene is like a nightmare on screen. But by far the scariest thing is that all the kids who suffer the twisted and cruel punishments(which far exceed their crimes) are never seen again. Of course Wonka says "take her to the juicing room" etc etc., his tone of voice is always humoring and you can't really believe he's gonna do anything about their conditions. It seems much more like they just die. When Gene Hackman screams at the end...woah. It really makes your stomach tie itself in triple knots. Then the song at the end. That horrid horrid horrid song....
FeyPiper@aol.com:
What didn't frighten me? Mimes. Mimes scared the hell out of me (and still do) I mean, they're like goth clowns or something. They smile and smile and smile all the time, but I bet inside they're just festering pools of hatred. You can feel it. I swear. The way they're always putting a box between them and the rest of the world... they just don't care. It's sickening.
My aunt's dog. It was a twisted little scotch terrier that was diabetic. My aunt came home once and found the little vicious thing on the floor in insulin shock. But when the thing was fired up, it really got going. It would steal your socks and hoard them, for hours. You had to keep your socks and stuff on really high dressers so the dog couldn't steal them and run away. My grandfather dropped a sock on the floor once, bent down to pick it up, and the dog bit him and took the sock. Plus it would take its dry dog food and leave it in places I couldn't possibly imagine it could get to. One of my most frightening childhood memories is waking up in the morning to find myself staring a lone chunk of kibble right in the face. How the hell the sick little thing got up to my bed through a closed door and placed the kibble there without waking me up is one of those things that I find myself worrying about.
Nature programs. My parents would turn on the TV to the nature channel, find something nice with zebra grazing peacefully on the Serengeti plains, say "Look, baby zebra!" and leave. While they were in the kitchen, cooking, the lions would appear. My parents would always respond to my frightened cries of "Run, RUN!" several moments after the small defenseless zebra had been pounced on, eviscerated, and bloodily eaten. They would find me staring glassily in shock at the screen, which now showed a school of silvery tuna, migrating, pat me on the head, move back out of the room, and talk about psychiatric counseling. Meanwhile, the sharks would stroll slowly out of the depths.
My grandfather. I remember I found him watching television late one night in the living room, munching on something in a bowl. I asked him what he was eating. He showed me. "Duck feet," he said, and he was. Appparently it's a delicacy in China. I, however, was compelled by family loyalties to spend several hours sitting in an armchair with my grandfather, watching "Beverly Hillbilles" reruns and eating duck feet.
Honeycomb. I was positive one day I'd bite in and there'd be a bee.
Monsters under the bed. I didn't see what other kids complained about- they only had around a foot of space under there- but I slept in a bunk bed- and there was room for some pretty serious monsters down there.
Snakes. I ran over a snake once with a lawnmower.
Being buried alive. This one was totally irrational.
Mice. I was positively convinced that the mice would creep out from their little holes and crannies and eat my eyes. I believe this stems from rolling over in bed onto a dead mouse once.
Earwigs and wasps, in combination. We wondered why the dog wasn't using his new doghouse, and I was sent in to find out. Guess what I found.
What frightened/disturbed me? Um... here's a list:
1) Night of the Living Dead. I've never even seen the movie in it's entirety. But I saw enough. I was scared of dead people for years.
2) Cemetaries. (See above. Continuing on the same thread, I was staying at my grandmother's house at the time. Having a cemetary just a short walk down the street didn't help.)
3) The Interboro Expressway. (Now known as the Jackie Robinson Expressway.) This is partly in Queens. You know what Queens has a lot of? Cemetaries.
4) The idea of the 70's. Here was a decade, over for quite some time. (I was four. It was a long time.) And yet, everyone seemed to still be living in it. Disco. ::shudders::
5) Galaxy Express 999. (This is anime, if you haven't heard of it.) I don't know what scared me about this. It just gave me the creeps. But yet, I still watched it. Car crash syndrome. Except here, it was a train.
6) The scene in Akira where Tetsuo's arm mutates. Just plain gross.
7) The Gowanus Expressway. Always congested, and while you sat in traffic, your only scenery are these dilapidated factories. Is it any wonder why I feared it?
I'm probably the only kid to ever be scared of highways... no wonder I refuse to learn how to drive.