As an adult, what childhood fears occasionally overwhelm you?

I prefer staying away from the basement at night. We have tornado warnings right now and I’ll just hang out upstairs by the TV until they tell us to take cover.

dentist

I can talk myself into monsters in the dark, when I’m sleepy enough. Nothing solid, but a sort of, “Yeah, but what if there is one?” sort of thought. Naturally, the response is to wrap the blanket tight, especially over my head.

When I hear fire engines, I start to shake a little bit. A house and a car, on separate occasions burned to a crisp on my street when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and our canyon caught on fire on mulitiple occasions. I thought it was only a matter of time when the fire was going to get me and my family. The smell of a house fire or a canyon fire is very different than your run of the mill fireplace, beach or campfire scent. Also, I always heard the term “put out fires” when I was really little, so I had this image of firemen putting forth fires out of their hoses, instead of water.

Also the fear of heights, specifically of dropping. Around the same time as the above events, I took an airplane flight, it dropped a considerable distance very quickly in an air pocket, I thought I was going to die. Subsequently, I don’t fly. It may have been the same year, my Grandma was staying at a fancy old hotel downtown in our city, it had one of those old-style hand cranked systems that was operated by an elevator attendent. We got on the elevator and it dropped!!! No one was injured, but it cemented my fear of heights. I avoided elevators for about 10 years after that.

Now I am able to comfortably ride elevators with about 10 floors or less, anything above that and I get a little panicky, but I was able to ride the glass elevator on the outside of the Bonaventure Hotel (I think it’s 40 floors) with my brother last year. I stood near the back and held on to him. I trust him implicitly and he said if it was too much for me, that we would get off and not go to the top.

I will probably never fly again. People often say, “Flying is the safest mode of transportation.” I say to them phhhhhhttttttt! You can’t fall 30,000 feet out of your car, nor is it likely that terrorists will have planted a bomb in my luggage in my own trunk, nor will they try to drive my Hyundai into the side of a building. Nor will I ever have to sit next to an obese person who reeks of onions (unless I want to).

In addition to my fear of heights and flying and falling, I also have a weird fear of not being able to get to a restroom in time. I’ve never pooped my pants, but it makes me crazy, thinking that when I gotta pee or poo (God forbid I should have to poo in a public restroom, ever!) I might find that the plane’s bathroom is occupied. FOR HOURS ON END!

Walking in dark places alone at night. Bugs.

Even as a grown woman I still can’t sleep with any appendages hanging off the edge of the bed. I’m afraid I’ll be either pulled off (yes by a monster) or I’ll fall off. Also I can’t have my head under the blankets. It feels like I’m going to run out of air and die.

Can’t think of anything.

Anything that involves possibly getting an electric shock. My mom told me about an incident I was involved with as a child that included a hairpin and an electric socket. I don’t have any memory of the occurrence, but I sure over-react to shocks, even those caused by static.

Fear of misplacing something.

Fear of forgetting to zip up after a trip to the bathroom.

Let’s see… I scurry out of dark rooms and down dark hallways hoping the boogies don’t catch me. I hate going to the bathroom in the dark because a snake may be in the toilet. When I sleep alone I will cover my ear because there were witches in our attic when I was little who would chant my name while stirring their kettle. I also hide my hands because I don’t want Perry Smith to stab me in my sleep and make it look like I did it myself.
Yep… it’s pretty interesting inside my head there ; )