Oddly specific childhood fears

[VoidCat]

What is a childhood fear you have? Im not talking about like fear of the dark or anything like that. Im talking about those weird oddly specific childhood fears like if you step on a sewer grate/cover you would fall to your doom, or if you sleep your feet hanging off the bed it'll get grabbed.

* when going bowling I was afraid I'd roll down the aisle and get squished by the pins. I still have an irrational fear of bowling tho i know this is unlikely to actually happen.

*When going to the bathroom the fear of something will pop out the drain. I no longer have this fear but thats a weird one

*fear of getting sucked into the vacuum cleaner. This one is a funny one looking back.

 

[VoidCat]

Tagging @We Never Know. Since his thread inspired mine

 

[ChristineM]

Wardrobes.

I was fine but one night i was allowed to stay up and watch a scary program. It came out of the wardrobe or somesuch.

I went to bed and obviously had not closed my wardrobe door properly. Just dozing off to sleep, i heard a click and squeek as the wardrobe door opened.

Having a wardrobe in my room was not a good experience after that. It must have been 10 years before i got over that fear.

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

I used to be afraid of the screws in the corners of my bed.
When my mom put me to bed she had to slap them to make me feel safe.

I used to be scared of a huge silo on my uncle's farm.

My mother used to have a doll from her childhood.
The doll's mouth was damaged and just looked like a huge gaping hole which made it look like a monster to me.

My grandma used to have an Indonesian play mask I was very scared of.

I used to be scared of the seeds of some fruits, especially that of the nectarine and of honeydew melons.
The shells of chestnuts were horrifying too.
They all looked like scary animals to me.

I once saw a child with a deformed ear.
To me it looked like the auricle was folded in half and had grown stuck into his head that way.
After that I was scared to fold my own ears out of fear my ears might look like that too if I did that.

 

[JustGeorge]

There was a painting of Ernest T Bass in the back of Wal-Mart that used to terrify me to my core. My mom recently admitted she used to go back there intentionally because she thought my frantic episodes were funny(jerk).

I used to be afraid that a dinosaur would materialize on the second floor of my grandmother's house(I don't know why, I really love her house).

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

My mom recently admitted she used to go back there intentionally because she thought my frantic episodes were funny(jerk).

Yeah, my mom liked to play such games with me too..

 

[JustGeorge]

Yeah, my mom liked to play such games with me too..

I paid mine back... not necessarily in fear, but I made enough off beat comments/did enough offbeat things growing up that sometimes got her negative reactions from others.

 

[Sand Dancer]

There was a small forest at the bottom of the hill on our street, and I was afraid to walk near it. When walking with my mom, we had to take the side street before we got to it instead of taking the street that was right next to it.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Every strange noise outsude was a ufo above my house.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What is a childhood fear you have? Im not talking about like fear of the dark or anything like that. Im talking about those weird oddly specific childhood fears like if you step on a sewer grate/cover you would fall to your doom, or if you sleep your feet hanging off the bed it'll get grabbed.

* when going bowling I was afraid I'd roll down the aisle and get squished by the pins. I still have an irrational fear of bowling tho i know this is unlikely to actually happen.

*When going to the bathroom the fear of something will pop out the drain. I no longer have this fear but thats a weird one

*fear of getting sucked into the vacuum cleaner. This one is a funny one looking back.

Nuclear war... but with a weird twist.

I grew up in Toronto. The CN Tower is a prominent part of the downtown skyline.

One thing about the CN Tower is that the top section is white. It has a more than passing similarity to a big 70s-era NASA-style rocket. That part of the tower was also off-limits to the public until recently.

When I was around 6 or 7, I decided that this thing that looked like a rocket really was an actual rocket. I figured that was the point of the whole tower: to get the rocket part high enough that the rocket's blast wouldn't destroy the built-up area around the tower.

... but why would someone put a rocket in the middle of a city? This was the middle of the Cold War, so the answer was obvious: in case of nuclear attack.

Even as a 7-year-old, I recognized that the "escape rocket" wouldn't hold everyone in the city. The "rocket" looked to be about the size of a Saturn V, which I knew only held three people. I figured that a rocket that didn't carry a big service module and a lunar lander might be able to carry a few dozen people.

So who had a spot on the rocket? Trying to figure this out really bothered me. One thing was clear, though: because my parents had never mentioned any sort of plan for us to get to the rocket in case of emergency, I could be sure that my family and I weren't getting on.

So 7-year-old me was left thinking that nuclear war was such a major threat that the government had decided my city needed an escape rocket, but I knew that I didn't have a place on that rocket.

I never mentioned this to my parents. I just kept my worries to myself.

 

[SalixIncendium]

When I was a child, I used to fear cars starting up and running me down as I walked by them.