Top 9 Irrational Childhood Fears

Ah, the fears of childhood… young  minds, trying to make sense of world that makes no sense… we project fantasies onto the world from the darkest parts of our minds, and some not-so-dark parts.  The same holds true for a lot adult fears as well.  I know that my active imagination invented so many reasons to fear certain things that, once I really thought about them, seemed pretty stupid.  So just for fun, here’s a list of irrational fears from my childhood.  When I started this list, a few other fears came to mind… I thought about clowns, jello with fruit suspended in it, those things where you have to put all the pieces in before the time runs out or it pops up and sends them flying everywhere… but those fears seem pretty rational to me.  These are just a few things that probably shouldn’t have scared me, but did.  So without further ado, and in no particular order… here are my Top 9 Irrational Childhood Fears… why top 9?  Because I like to be different, and if that means less work for me, so much the better!

#9  Shoes on the Side of the Road

Actually, this still freaks me out.  For some reason, and I’m not sure when it started or what might have started it, whenever I see a shoe on the side of the road, my mind says, “There’s a foot in that shoe!”  That’s the first place I go to, and I don’t know why.  I get images of the shoe with a severed foot inside.  I can’t control it, the images just flash in my head for a while, and then fade away.  I have this fear that one day, when the images have stopped, I’ll be walking along a roadside somewhere and I’ll stumble upon a shoe with a foot inside.

 

#8  The Scene From The Little Mermaid Where King Trident… is that right?  no that’s the gum… oh well… When King Whats-His-Face Destroys Ariel’s Treasures From the Surface.

Okay, that’s not a picture of this particular scene that I’m talking about, but I’m not going to spend a lot time googling Little Mermaid screencaps.  This scene of destruction literally made me cry… I’d have to get up and leave the room until it was over.  He was just mean.  It was loud and angry and it just plain scared the hell out of me.  I mean look how much bigger he is!  That’s your kid man, how you gonna do something like that?  What a poop-head.  (That’s what my little kid mind thought, my grown-up mind would probably have said shit-head.)

#7   Doors at the End of Hallways

I don’t know where this fear came from.  It didn’t even have to be a creepy-looking hallway, any hallway with a door on the end would do the trick.  I grew up Catholic, and for some reason my image of hell always consisted of a fiery abyss that was locked away behind a door at the end of a long hallway.  The longer the hallway, the scarier it was, and of course that fear carried over into the room itself.  A room at the end of a hallway was a very unsettling place for me.

#6   Harry and the Hendersons

Long story short, it made me afraid of Bigfoot… specifically, I was afraid that Bigfoot would emerge from his hiding spot at night and peek in my window.  Why that very specific fear?  I have no idea, but I’m still in the habit of pulling the blinds shut the opposite way… ya know because Bigfoot was really tall so if I shut the blinds the opposite way it would block his line of sight.  Always the little thinker…

#5   Air Conditioner Vents

I guess I was just a really paranoid kid.  In my mind, I’d always imagine someone or something watching me through the vents.  I swear I even saw eyes a couple of times.  Despite my very active imagination, I eventually got over it.

 

 

(and ya know what’s fucked up?  I photoshopped that picture with eyes I got off a movie poster for Harry and the Hendersons)

#4   The Lollipop Guild

Let me sum up this fear with a simple equation:

Now I want to be clear that I wasn’t afraid of little people in general.  I was, however, wary of the ones who huffed helium and danced like possessed Kewpie dolls.  I think one of the creepiest things about the Lollipop Guild was the fact that they looked like adults dressed up as kids.  Ya know, on a similar note, the Oompa Loompas also scared the ever-living shit out of me.  I’m starting to think this was a pretty rational fear after all.

#3   Teen Wolf

Michael J. Fox dressed up as a werewolf is just creepy.  I happened to walk into my aunt’s house one day when they were watching the movie.  It was the scene where he was flipping around the gym, remember that craziness?  That shit made no earthly sense to me, and for some reason, I was really afraid of werewolves after that.  I mean, look at that picture and tell me that doesn’t freak you out.  Maybe in my head it got all lumped in with fairy tales about the big bad wolf… I don’t know.  Either way, my parents couldn’t actually convince me that werewolves didn’t really exist, so instead, my mom told me that she had lived in that town all her life and she’d never ever ever EVER seen one… and that’s the origin of one of my signature childhood phrases… those oh-so-cute lines that make them tell this story again and again, “Dere’s no big bad wolfas in ‘dis town.”  Yes, unfortunately I did have a hint of a Cajun accent when I was little.  I did spend the crucial years of my language development in Gueydan after all.  I honestly don’t know where I got that extra “a” sound at the end, but that’s what it was… “wolfas”.

#2   Secret Bear

Like most 80s children, I was a big fan of the Care Bears.  I had a few of the stuffed bears to cuddle and love, but one in particular stands out in my mind:  the talking “Secret Bear”.  You would pull a string coming out of his rear-end and he would utter several enigmatic, vaguely creepy phrases in a voice like an asthmatic pedophile.  He would quietly tell you, “You’re my secret friend”  or that “you can tell me anything”… which you could do with confidence since he followed that phrase with an even creepier “I promise I won’t tell.”  I fell for it too.  I can’t believe I told him all that stuff… Granted, this toy is probably a lot more scary in retrospect than it was at the time.

and my #1 Irrational Childhood Fear

Pirate Teddy Ruxpin

Now, initially Teddy Ruxpin wasn’t scary… pirate Teddy kind of freaked me out though.   One day… I guess I must’ve been about four years old, I was sitting in my parent’s bedroom playing with Teddy Ruxpin.  Being an extraordinarily bright child, I was curious as to the inner workings of the toy.  I wondered what made his eyes open and close, his mouth move, etc.  In my quest to satisfy my curiosity, I inadvertently broke Teddy Ruxpin.  In short, I poked his eye out… literally, the plastic eyeball popped out in my hand.  It was actually pretty traumatic for me.  My attempts to put it back in didn’t really work out so well and my parents, of course, discovered what I had done.  My mom put poor Teddy away for a while, out of reach but unfortunately not out of sight.  He sat on the top shelf in my closet for a while, his empty eye socket staring down at me, a constant reminder of the damage I had inflicted upon the poor, innocent tape-deck teddy bear.  Well we eventually missed Teddy Ruxpin, so my mom came up with a solution.  She put an eye patch on the bear, and for years after that, we had a pirate Teddy… and while that sounds rather intriguing as some kind of buccaneer-themed lingerie, I assure you it’s a different thing entirely when you’re talking about a one-eyed talking teddy bear.  (He really looked like that too, sans the hat of course)

So there it is… an extra special glimpse into my life.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this neurotic little stroll down memory lane with me.

Kristen Stewart in Allure (alternate title: Why the Fuck Did I Buy a Copy of Allure?)

For all my criticism of trivial ramblings, I think I’ll start with a pre-trivialized thought and delve a little deeper…

Nov. 2009 issue of Allure

Today marks the first time in many years that I’ve purchased – well I was going to say purchased a magazine solely because of the person on the cover, but now I realize that it’s the first time in many years that I’ve purchased a magazine period, and the first time in my life that I’ve ever purchased a fashion magazine.  Admittedly, it was an impulse buy at Albertsons.  I had run in to get my “meatless” meat for vegetarian spaghetti and I saw Kristen Stewart on the cover of Allure.

Had I stopped to consider what I was doing, I probably would’ve put the unnecessarily thick beauty rag right back on the stand where I found it, but I was seized by the delightful irony of someone the article calls “the country’s most reluctant celebrity” gracing the cover of a major fashion magazine.  The write-up on the front reads “Kristen Stewart:  The Rumors, the Spotlight, and 1,000 Other Things That Make Her Really, Really Uncomfortable.”  I mean, it’s perfection.  How could I not have bought it?  Okay, so I’m an easy sell.  At any rate… it’s really strange having a copy of Allure laying on my bed.

The article was way in the back, after more than 150 pages of outrageously overpriced dresses and purses, samples of outrageously overpriced designer perfume that smelled like soap (just throwing out a slogan suggestion here: “you’re not fully hip unless you’re zestfully broke”), and detailed instructions on how to get a certain look with your outrageously overpriced makeup.  But I have to say, in a strange way, I have a new level of respect for her from some of the things she puts up with.  If there was ever a picture of my face with the text “Shiny, Bouncy Hair” anywhere near it, I think I’d just have to stab myself in the eye with a fondue fork.

I almost feel dirty writing about it, since the essence of the article seems to be her various issues with fame, paparazzi, and “people” talking about her.  That was actually a word specifically addressed in the article, not just my penchant for unnecessary quotations… though those are a lot of fun too.  “People” meaning bloggers and commenters… I’d imagine mostly teens and twenty-somethings who think a username and password are sufficient credentials to pass judgement on celebrities while abusing the capslock and using colorful language and misspelled words with lots of extra vowels thrown in.  So am I perpetuating the cycle?  Well I don’t see it that way.  The cycle is self-perpetuating, I’m just trying to throw a little common sense into the mix.  It’s still idiotic, but I could at least try to dilute it a little.

She knows what kind of things are being said about her.  That alone should bother those “people” who are putting it out there.  It’s just in poor taste, plain and simple.  We all know what’s being said – yes even I’ll admit that I’ve googled her a few times.  (I’m not the only one that thinks that sounds like a euphemism right?  Wink, wink, nod, nod, say no more.)  I’m probably the only person who saw Twilight just for Kristen Stewart.  I’m not a fan of the movie… full disclosure, I can’t stand it.  Sorry, mary-sue vampires that sparkle aren’t really my thing.

Kristen Stewart in The Safety of Objects

But as an actress, Kristen’s made an impression on me since  The Safety of Objects (which is a fantastic movie, watch it).  What can I say?  She’s always had a really special, honest, and endearing quality about her… and yes, it certainly doesn’t hurt that she grew up to be pretty darn attractive in the physical sense too.  Oh, and just an aside here, anyone who wants to say she can’t act should watch The Cake Eaters.  Her performance is heartbreaking, and I mean that in the best possible sense of the word.

So yeah, I guess I’m a fan, though I’m a remarkably subdued person… and I hate the word “fan” (only in the sense implied here though, not as in an aerodynamic blade that circulates air… those are brilliant).  Either way, I can imagine the hysteria of all that sudden fame is just, well, hysterical – and not in an lol way but in an omg wtf way.  I hate that crap by the way… I don’t mean btw either, I mean “by the way”.  The internet is going to be the death of grammar as we know it.

So now, Kristen, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to use you as a jumping off point for one of my random diatribes… congrats.   Your award is in the post.   Not post like a blog post, I meant post like the mail… oh what the fuck does it matter I was just being sarcastic anyways.

People are entitled to their own private lives, whether they are known by only a few people or a few million people.  I don’t care what argument you might have to make, being a celebrity doesn’t suddenly turn someone’s life into the public domain.  I honestly don’t understand the rabid fascination.  “Oh I wonder who she’s dating?”  I wonder what makes you think it’s any of your business in the first place.  Shit, I’m so sick of hearing about it, I can only imagine how she feels.

I’d really like to say I’m surprised by some of the things people are saying, but I’m not that naive.  People can be mean, downright fucking cruel sometimes.  I’m not sure what makes people say some of the crazy shit they say… jealousy, idiocy, sadism, verbal dysentery… I suppose there are a lot of reasons and excuses for being a great ass, none of them good.  Personally, I don’t think there’s a damn thing wrong with her.  Of course there’s no way to actually know someone through photos and interviews and movies and whatnot, but she certainly seems like a pretty great girl – talented, genuine, and beautiful.  So maybe lay off a bit, huh?  Sure she’s got flaws, who doesn’t?  It’s called being human.  Honestly, what ever happened to decency?  Would it kill us to be nice?

Kristen Stewart in The Cake Eaters

I think we have become so used to the artificiality of Hollywood that it now makes us uncomfortable to see a celebrity who doesn’t have that false exterior.  Seems like in Hollywood, sincerity is a shock to the system.  That’s fucked up, there isn’t really a more eloquent way to put it.  What is wrong with this culture of ours that we would denigrate someone for being just as human as you or I?

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Blogs are a strange concept for me. I get the impression that most bloggers imagine themselves standing on a podium speaking to a vast crowd of people hanging onto their every word, when in reality it’s more like screaming at a rock concert. Everyone else is screaming, no one is really paying attention to anyone in particular. We aren’t the ones on stage, we’re not the stars. We’re the crowd, the faceless masses. We’re the white-clad figures rocking back and forth in the corner of a padded room muttering repetitive, unintelligible phrases. We’re the crazy men with sandwich boards that warn of impending doom on the crowded sidewalks of city streets. We’re letters to the editor. However you look at it, we’re essentially talking to ourselves… somehow convincing ourselves that something will come of it.

There is so much being said, so many people speaking, that all meaning is lost and we can’t make sense out of any one thing. All thoughts and ideas, no matter how important or profound they may seem to us as individuals, are trivialized, drowned out in the roar of the crowd. One single person’s thoughts on world hunger, the war, or injustice can’t be heard above others’ thoughts on celebrity romance, news about what actress did what crazy thing to her hair, or what Kate’s saying about John. It’s not necessarily good or bad, it’s just the way things are. All things considered, it’s amazing how much nothing we have to say. It’s sad in a sense, to imagine so many wasted words. I love words. They’re a powerful, limitless natural resource. I suppose I blog ironically, which is the best way to do anything, in my opinion. I’m a big fan of irony.

But really, why do it at all? Maybe we’re just seeking a connection of some sort, that’s certainly a possibility… just a mechanism of social evolution. Blogs, social networking, community online art projects like Post Secret… they offer us a conduit for the exchange of ideas, and ideological exchange drives and shapes the evolution of societies.

Maybe in a personal sense it’s a way to unburden ourselves – toss our ideas, fears, opinions, and feelings into the sea of the human collective. We project ourselves onto the world, so that we might come to better understand it. It’s the cult of anonymity, the cult of the individual.  I love the irony in the way we whisper our secrets to the world, hoping that one person out of billions can relate. When we share ourselves we are silently asking for validation. It’s about wanting to be heard and understood, maybe in some way it’s about satisfying that innate need to be loved. Sometimes it’s as simple as wanting to know that we’re not alone. Essentially I think we’re all just reaching out and hoping that somehow, someone will reach back. It doesn’t matter if that person is a faceless avatar… it doesn’t matter that we don’t know them. I don’t really think that’s the point. It’s another human being – it’s anyone, and in that sense, it’s everyone.

Then down at the bottom of that list, there are people like me, who have something to say only they’re not quite sure what it is, and it doesn’t really matter if anyone else listens anyway. All my life it’s as if I’ve been searching for the right words, the perfect phrase. I know it exists… like a higher truth. I seek words like some people seek god. It’s a search for the truth of our world, the truth of who we are as individuals and who we are as human beings. Every day I feel closer and farther away at the same time, but it’s a search that, by it’s very nature, is endless. That’s just one of the many frustrating and wonderful things about life.