August 04, 1999
It Had Big Sharp, Pointy Teeth!
(After a bit of a hiatus, I'm getting back to doing a collaborative entry for Speak Freely, a webring for journals on free webspace.)
Fear. Interesting topic for me to write on right now, considering that I'm planning to go see (finally!) "The Blair Witch Project" tomorrow night. Twice tonight I spooked myself over that movie, and I haven't even seen it yet. Things were especially quiet at work tonight, so I spent some time looking over the website. Mistake. Like I said, it was quiet in the office, and I sat there and read all of Heather's 'journal'. Major 'skin on the back of the neck crawling' feeling. But I got over it. I ended up staying over a couple of hours to work on the page that deals with the MUSHes I play on. So of course, when I went to leave, the parking lot (which borders on a patch of woods) was completely empty, and I was parked way off in a dark corner. MORE 'skin on the back of my neck crawling'. It was bad. By the time I got to my car, I was almost panicked, convinced that something was going to come out of the woods and get me. Once I was in the car, I had to lock the doors and check the back seat and the hatch thoroughly to make sure I didn't have any passengers. I was about halfway home before I really calmed down.
I haven't even seen the damn movie yet!
But that's not what I was gonna tell you about. Childhood fears. I had a lot. As a kid (well, okay, as an adult too), I was especially imaginative. And while that's a great thing overall, your mind does create a lot of fears. A lot of them were typical. The closet door had to be closed before I could go to sleep. When I turned out the light, I always made a running leap for my bed, just so the monster under the bed couldn't catch my ankle. Likewise, I couldn't sleep if my arms or legs weren't under at least a sheet. (I'm still this way.) See, if my foot is sticking out, then Something might reach up from under the bed and grab it. I also went through a period where I slept with my head under the covers too. I'd gotten the idea that ghosts and spirits floated in the air above my bed, and if I breathed in without having my head under the covers, they'd be able to get inside me.
I was afraid of UFOs. Moving lights in the sky at night terrified me. Or even anything I couldn't identify in the daytime. Once, when I was about five, maybe, my best friend Kristy and her older friend (damn, what was her name... Dawn?) spent the afternoon at Kristy's house telling me about UFOs and how they were going to come get me. The day was overcast, and I remember getting so scared I decided to go home. However, once I got outside, I got so scared I had to have my mom come and get me, because I could see something moving in the clouds. Not so bad right? Until you consider that I lived maybe half a block from Kristy. I just remember going outside, looking up into the sky and panicking. I knew that if I tried to walk home, the UFOs would come down outta the sky and take me away.
As far as more realistic fears, I was always frightened of house fires. I can't remember when I got over it, but I was an adult before I could actually sleep in a room with the door open. I used to spend hours trying to figure out how I'd get out of the house if it caught on fire. Likewise, I was scared of tornadoes. Even the tornado drills at school made me sick to my stomach. And I hated the hunched over, crunched-up position we had to sit in for that, too.
My really really big childhood fear though, the one that sticks out in my memory, is my fear of a dread entity, one that stalked the night, sneaking into people's bedrooms while they slept to bite them... and one that somehow had something to do with recreational vehicles. That's right...
What a way to combine two fears in one, monsters AND fires. But I had a way to protect myself from the evil van-fires. They weren't gonna bite me on the neck. If sleeping buried under the covers didn't make them think I was gone, then I was going to have my dad make a special mattress for me: one with a hollow center. Then, when I heard the van-fires coming, I could roll off my bed and crawl into the mattress and hide.
Like I said, I was an imaginative child. And I'm still not completely sure I should go see TBWP. I'm sitting here in my room with all the lights as bright as they can go.
Good night. Don't let the van-fires bite.
Posted by Lisa at August 4, 1999 10:55 PM
