re: Dumbest thing you were scared of as a child.

Bath tub drains. Saw a Tom and jerry episode where jerry got sucked into a drain. shite scarred me for life.

I thought I was the only kid that was terrified of the Thriller video.

gotdamn flying moneys in The Wizard Of Oz

My mom is from Eastern KY, small town called Cattletsburg near Ashland. Everytime we visited her family we would drive by the oil refinery in Ashland and one of their huge tanks had ASHLAND OIL in big letters, for some stupid reason I was always too scared to look at it and covered my eyes while we drove by

It's completely inexplicable but somehow I was terrified of the song "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash. Whatever went on in my squirmy brain when that song came on, it made me absolutely convinced that there was a maneating monster living under my bed. But not at any other time but when I heard that song. It's possible that I had a nightmare about it while the song was playing and the association came from that. I have no clue.

I still get a slight panicky feeling when I hear it. So weird.

quote:

---

Thriller video.

---

Dyslexic the 5th wasn't a big fan of it when he was a youngster either.

A snake coming from the toilet coming and biting me while I was sitting down. I saw a movie where snakes were coming out of the toilet and was terrified for years. I would have to sit so that I could look down to make sure nothing was going to come out.

It was the REAL monsters


Not the movie monsters mind you, but the personal ones. The ones that lurked in your woods or haunted your neighborhoods.

The things that bumped ever so palpably in your nights?
Here's mine.



We called him Mr. Hungry. In the very back of the woods where on my grandparents property there was a thicket. Deep and dark and overgrown, with heavy woods all around, too thick to venture in to. Always dark, so clustered and shaded that you couldn't see far into it at much at all.
That was where Mr. Hungry lived.

We'd bring all the carcasses there. Rabbits, squirrels, fish, anything that bled. It was always the kids job to bring the entrails there, a long walk through a wooded corridor, back to the thicket...the thicket where Mr. Hungry dwelt, always watching, and always, always hungry.

That trek, eerily quiet when you reached it, it seemed. Like the birds would quit chirping there, and all you would hear is the wind...the wind, and the faintest whisper of utter silence, and that feeling of hidden eyes crawling over your skin.

So many times we'd bring the bloodstained bucket of steaming guts and skin and fur and bones and heads.
You'd walk slow there, eyes darting to and fro, watching for movement in the woods. And sometimes, sometimes you'd swear you'd see catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, some darting shadow moving swift just outside of your field of vision, and always when you'd turn towards it...nothing. Nothing but the feeling that you were not alone.

It was always better to feed Mr. Hungry with someone else. A sibling, a friend, a cousin. It made the walk easier, and the mad dash for home right after you threw the foul mix into the thicket a breathless race, almost fun.
But sometimes, you had to go alone. Alone to that place where there were never any bones or skulls left from previous visits..And you would swear, when the wind died, that you could hear the faintest whisper of heavy breath. Heavy, hot, and always so very, very, hungry.

But we made damn sure that there was something to bring when we visited, because if he didn't get fed...well, he might start looking. And maybe he'd leave that foul place where the brambles grew close as kin and ground was always wet, and if he did, he might be hungry for something...fresher.

We lost my younger brother in Wal-Mart one day. When we found him at the front of the store, after the announcement was made about a little boy who lost his parents. My dad started calling him by a different name for years. He told my brother he brought home a different kid.

Some of my dads friends still call my brother by that name.