Basically anything that didn’t do lasting harm. (Even if you’re still a little frighted to this day)
The thing that scared me the most as a kid was R.I.P the Cat from Goosebumps. I was terrified of that cat for DAYS I think. I’m pretty sure I watched other goosebumps movies before that but that one really stuck with me.
The CD for that particular movie was too scratched to play properly so I never seen the end! (Still haven’t) I think the lack of a resolution is why I was extra scared of that one. (Even if most goosebumps movies still have something at the end that implies it’s not totally over.) I watched enough to be scared but not enough to be relieved after lol. (Anyone else got a similar story?)
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The sound of the vacuum was terrifying to me as a kid. Gave me the dreads when my mom would bring the vacuum out.
I had a Count Dracula action figure that came from a McDonald’s happy meal. I didn’t know what vampires were. My mum called it “Mr Dracula” and he was the stand-in for my male characters when playing with dolls. Fast forward a few months. I find out what a vampire is. One day we’re out, and I remember this moment very distinctly, it dawns on me out of nowhere that Mr Dracula might in fact be a vampire. As soon as we get home I dig him out of my toy box and take a closer look and indeed he has fangs. I start scream-wailing while still holding him up to my face. Mum rushes in thinking something terrible has happened, then quickly figures out I’ve finally discovered the truth about Mr Dracula.
My grandmother had this decorative snowman that she brought out every winter. I hated it. I was convinced it was haunted. To this day, that damn thing makes me uncomfortable.
When I was a little kid I had a recurring nightmare that involved a teacup from a toy tea set my sister had. The teacup wasn’t the scary part of the dream, but since the dream was so traumatizing it made me hate the teacups. I refused to touch or go near them ever again.
My mom and I went to the local art museum and they had an Egyptian exhibit. They recreated a tomb and the passageway into it scared me something awful. It was dark and I was convinced that a mummy was going to jump out like on “Legends of the Hidden Temple.”
The movie IT
H.R. Puffnstuff still gives me the creeps
The strong draught you get in a house when two doors are opened at opposite ends. That still gives me a rising sense of dread whenever it happens, even though I’m a 33 year old man now.
My brother told me when I was little that when you flush the toilet, Ghosts come out of it.
I’m 34 and still find myself almost sprinting away from the toilet after flushing at night 😂
I was afraid of excavators.
Mine was mentos. As a kid, I was so convinced that if you swallow one, the mentos will stretch in your insides and then kill you. I, then 9, gave my little brother, then 4, one and forgot to tell him not to swallow it. He did. I panicked but I thought I couldn’t do anything now that it was already in his insides. I didn’t tell my parents about it because I was afraid they’d scold me. So I was good to my brother the entire time I thought he was dying.
Of course he didn’t and he’s still alive today.
The car wash
Big Bird lol
Garter snakes. Still scream and run when I see one.
Moomins, especially the Groke and the hattifatenners, nightmare fuel.
When I was really young, we had this night light that changed colors, and any time it turned red it freaked me out and I thought it had some connection to monsters or smth so I’d close my eyes whenever it turned red. (Idk how old I was but pretty young) I’m not sure what my thought process was exactly, but something about the light turning red scared me lol
The Disney movie Fantasia
Everyone here has such sweet things. I was, I have no idea why, terrified of public toilets.
I would decide that “that one” (in a line of stalls) was relatively safe, and would always use it. And I would not flush.
Later I got courageous enough to flush, but I would unload the stall door before I flushed, so I knew I wasn’t trapped.
The movie Mars Attacks scared me deeply as a child. Now I just think it’s really funny
The pool light. I wouldn’t go near it
Me and my mum used to go to this swimming pool with a cartoon orca painted on the tiles at the bottom. For some reason, both ends of the pool were shallow and the “deep end” was in the centre, so my mum used to get me to practice swimming from one shallow end to the other while I was still learning to swim. I was SO scared of that orca. It wasn’t that the art was scary, it was that it was at the bottom of the pool and for some reason, I thought it’d try to eat me so I refused to swim over it. I’d always swim along the edge of the pool to avoid being directly over the top of it.
My nana and grandad’s toilet.
My nana let me watch The Blob with her when I was maybe 6. When you flushed the toilet in their house, it made a repeated “bloop” sound as the cistern refilled. After that, I was convinced the sound was the Blob coming out of the toilet and you had to get to the bottom of the stairs by the time the blooping began or it would get you. I also convinced my little brother of this fact.
There was always something creepy about the children’s show The Magic Roundabout to me. The theme music itself still freaks me out as an adult
Rust on cars. I thought it meant they were sick and dying and it made me very sad so I was afraid to see it. For a while I kept my eyes firmly pinned on the ground in parking lots, but this one didn’t last all that long since I lived in a place where they salt for ice.
Certain bold typefaces and large letters in general, including a bunch of TV vanity cards/production logos. Sometimes this still sneaks up on me, like if I’m watching scary stuff at night and a big word fills up the screen just right I’ll be like “Nope this is too scary” and put on a different video lol. It was worse as a kid though. My family didn’t raise their voices and I felt like big letters were yelling so it bothered me.
Alf but only in the dark. We had an Airedale terrier that stuck his face into my room to check on me at night and I was fucking convinced it was Alf and hysterical about “Alf-in-the-dark”. I still loved Alf but I’d always cover my eyes during the theme song when he was playing rock music in the dark.
I was a weird kid.
Quicksand. If you’re of my generation, you know.
The sound of water going down the bath drain. Not sure why I was scared of it, but the sound unsettles me to this day 😬
Street sweepers. They’d drive by in the middle of the night and little me would wake up, and freeze because I was convinced if I moved, it would come sweep me up. Present (30s) me still has my stomach drop and freeze if one goes by my house at night.
Blue Oyster Cult. I was a kid during the whole satanic panic and somehow I got into my head that if I listened to Blue Oyster Cult I would be lured to the dark side and I don’t know, maybe go on a killing spree? They have cult in the their name! They have a superfluous umlaut! Their most famous song is Don’t fear the reaper! Clear indicators of satanism according to the news in the 80s. Years later I was in the car and the dj said something like “here’s don’t fear the reaper by blue oyster cult” and even then I had a moment of terror. Then the song plays and I realize I have heard it a bunch of times and never known what it was. It is a catchy, jangly pop song. It has not led to any killing sprees (yet).
My mom had an Elf on the Shelf she bought probably a decade before I was born. God, that thing freaked me out! I don’t like those things to this day.
I used to be scared of the pirate from the SpongeBob intro
Grew up a Victorian-style home and was truly convinced Injun Joe lived under the basement stairs. Even in college I’d take the stairs 2-3 at a time bc I felt like he was going to get me. My Mom would tease “he getcha?!”
Queen Latifa, I watched set it off and thought she’d shoot me
My grandmother made m scared of one if those old lenticular pictures of praying hands. She told me if I misbehaved the hands would come out and hit me. It wasn’t until adulthood when I realized how fucked up that was telling me that.
I was scared of the whale in Pinocchio.
The Aliens in Maths Quest. Judging from the comments I was not the only kid scared by them haha
https://youtu.be/o5kwLP5_gls?si=WfiCk-s-c-0ZX7gJ
My God-Mother worked for Dillards designing displays. One time she gave me (age5) a giant raggedy Ann doll (5 ft tall) that was posable – it had thick bendable wires so that it could be moved to different positions. Anyway Mom stuck it in my room. The thing gave me nightmares with its large black button eyes. I woke my parents up screaming and they shoved it in the closet. Next morning, I open the closet door to get clothes out and the blasted thing fell on me. I thought it was attacking me. I loathe Raggedy Ann dolls and Hate Neil Gamien too.
Toilet flushing, scary pictures in books. I had a very vivid imagination.
My brother terrified me with Bloody Mary as a kid. I couldn’t be in a dark room alone for a long time.
Thunder. Even now at 36, I’m startled by thunder
The movie clue scared me so much and still kinda does lol. Just that feeling of someone here isn’t who they seem
The electric knife used for turkeys. To this day I still can’t be in the house when it’s time to cut the damn bird. The sound feels like it’s shattering my brain.
Open curtains at night. I will always walk around and shut the curtains before it gets too dark now. My mom had decorative curtains in the kitchen for a few years and I refused to go in there at night. When I was little, I guess I had a bad dream or something about a floating eye ball at my patio door when I was sleeping on the couch and it still gets me scared subconsciously I guess haha.
In my dream, there was a glass cutter that was being used to get to the lock on my patio door to let the big eye ball in. I’ve had nightmares my whole life and would wake up paralyzed with fear to the point where I couldn’t even scream. I would have to lie there wide awake waiting to calm down just enough to let out the loudest blood curdling scream ever…. Every single night. I have no clue how my parents survived my childhood. They’d take me to their room and I would still have nightmares and flop all around but they could calm me down before the massive outbursts when I was in their room.
Can’t bath or shower in slightly dimmed lighting. Not sure what movie caused this but straight up nope, I will get a lamp for the bathroom if the lighting isn’t quite right.
And the basement stairs. The people under the stairs messed with me for so long that I finally had to watch it as an adult to see that it’s not actually scary haha. I had mean older siblings that would try get me worked up and scared about everything so I’m assuming they helped build my fear of that movie.
The sound of the water draining when I got out of the bath terrified the snot out of me. I ran so fast. 🏃♀️➡️
Them big inflatable hammers. Would cry everytime I saw one
Not me, but my younger brother used to be TERRIFIED of Golumn from the old animated movie of lord of the rings. He used to be so scared that he needed the dog to be in the bathroom with him when he showered lol
This old hanger shaped like a horse that used to sit in the corner of my bedroom. One day I had a bad dream about it coming to haunt me in my sleep and I never wanted to see it again
The warning that played before Beavis and Butthead episodes. It had creepy banjo music that scared the shit out of me!
My parents had a porcelain grim reaper statue. I used to sprint through the living room when I was in first grade because of it
The curtains in my bedroom as a kid were dark green and I was terrified of them because they only made the darkness worse. Also a fear of open wardrobes, and for some reason I started having nightmares about one of the MS Word assistants (a purple robot) because I was afraid he’d eat my fingers like fries
ETA the robot was F1 and it was red and purple
I was asleep in my Dad’s arms as a toddler at Universal Hollywood, and a man dressed as Frankenstein’s monster woke me to say “hello little girl!!” I was deathly afraid of Frankenstein’s monster for years
Creosote on my neighbor’s chimney. My mother had said something about it being dangerous because it could cause fires, so even though I couldn’t even see it, when I would walk down our halfway, I wouldn’t even glance out the window towards their house…just in case I saw the dangerous creosote.
I was also convinced that the fleur de lis logo on these paper cups my daycare sometimes used meant that someone was hiding under my bed with a knife. I remember thinking, “Well, I guess I’ll die tonight.”
You may be surprised to learn I have a touch of an anxiety disorder! 😂
The toilet flushing. I was afraid of getting flushed out with it.
I don’t know what movie this was, but they put a cat in the microwave, there was something about spider babies I think too? But the cat in the microwave thing really got to me…
I think there is also something about a fly and a person turning into a fly? I don’t know I might be imagining things but I swear there was a movie that encompass a lot of that lol
Grimace at McDonald’s 🤣
When I was about two, I was doubly traumatized on Halloween by the Jeff Goldblum version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (it was on television) and a trick or treater coming to the door dressed as one of the members of KISS. The kid scared me so badly with the wig and b&w face paint that I hid behind the recliner and refused to come out.
Velvet paintings of Jesus Christ, and the idea that he was supposed to be a ghost who could appear to you. All of that gave me a lot of anxiety.
My babysitters as a three to six year old were Catholics. They had that stuff everywhere. Whenever I had to sleep over there, on their living room couch, it was a nightmare.
I was very afraid of the green smoke that killed first borns in the movie The Ten Commandments since I was a First Born. The eerie silence and tone of that part of the movie terrified me.
The “pink elephants” sequence in Dumbo.
Back in the days when you would borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor (yes, I’m old), my mom sent me to the neighbor (3 houses up) for a cup of sugar. I was probably about 8-10 years old. So I go walking over there carrying a measuring cup. I had found a good stick on the way and picked it up. I get to the door and knock, but nobody’s answering.
As I’m still standing there waiting, I notice a pretty good sized spider on ground near me. It’s one of those thick, furry looking ones. Like a small tarantula. At that time, I had no fear, just curiosity. I had been poking things with the stick and scratching at the dirt with it, so once I spotted the spider, I tried to gently prod it with the stick to make it move. I had no intention of hurting it, but I accidently somehow managed to wedge the point of the stick into the space between the two parts of its body. Realizing I might be harming it, I quickly pulled my stick back but the spider was stuck on the stick.
This is the part that gave me arachnophobia. So I’m standing there holding a stick with a big fat spider on the end. The spider’s legs start going a mile a minute and I could have sworn I heard a buzzing sound. Freaked me RIGHT out. I screamed, threw the stick, and started running down the driveway terrified because spiders don’t buzz and this one looked really pissed off. When I got to the end of the driveway, I turned around and was absolutely positive that spider was right on my heel and that it had chased me the whole way. My imagination, I’m sure, but I ran all the way home screaming and terrified. That was it for me. I was afraid of spiders after that.
I don’t know where the hell I got this, but I have had nightmares about totem poles ever since I was a kid.
The dreams would always have me walking along our lake (I grew up on a lake)and I would stumble upon a random totem pole and it would start thumping and making sounds kind of like the Jumanji scene and then it would just bring tons of bad luck and horrible omens and shit like that lol
Wasps. I am in no way allergic (I would definitely be dead if I had been), and being near one will send me into a panic.
We had a neighbor who was an elderly Greek widow with a gorgeous garden of flowers in the front and a huge veggie garden out back with a little cottage in the middle. She always wore long black dresses and scarves and things. Walked with a big wooden stick rather than a cane and had a loud gravelly laugh.
We thought she was a witch.🤦♀️
Sesame St. used to run videos of various daily activities to show how things were made. There was one that involved the forging of a steel girder, and its journey through the foundry. For some reason, that one clip utterly terrified me, to the point of running screaming out of the room and hiding. To this day, I have no idea why.
Thunder and tornadoes! We lived in tornado alley, and it was storming bad, with thunderclaps that made the ground shake!
I was 2 or 3, and one of my older sisters told me that if I didn’t get inside the house, the tornado would get me!
I’m 59, and I still get nervous when the thunder makes the ground shake! My sister still feels guilty about my phobia of thunder.
Pluggie the robot fire hydrant from those school fire safety talks we got in the 90’s. Not animatronic enough to be ‘cute’, just a T-posed hydrant with glowing eyes rolling around. Terrifying as a kid. Especially since it was perfectly kid-height too.
The good old classic microwave. Now this fear is my fault entirely, I could never remember for the life of me to put water in my ramen noodles as well as other offenses.
Nowadays I need time to grow comfortable with my microwave, a few days/weeks to not run from it like a little kid when I heat anything up.
When I was about four, I used to think that there were monsters hiding in (from what I can recall) two different things.
The first one was the oven…which is a reasonable fear. They are definitely dangerous, and I guess that’s how my childhood brain conceptualized that danger.
But there was also sink/tub faucets. And that one was weird lmao. I don’t remember how that happened or how I got over it.
(As for what kind of monsters—if you opened the oven or turned on the faucets…something would crawl out, my childhood self feared. I think it was kind of a smoke like monster?)
For a fun little adventure movie, I found Honey I Shrunk The Kids terrifying.
As a kid of the 80’s, I was effing TERRIFIED of the garbage heap in Fraggle Rock. Like full on nightmares for days. Still get the shudders when I think of it. That or the smooze from My Little Ponies waaaay back in the day.
One of my great grandmother’s had an upright vacuum with a dress over it (used to be a thing to disguise the vacuum when it wasn’t in use.) It sat at the end of the hallway usually plugged in and would randomly turn on by itself which caused the dress to billow out and gave the impression it was moving towards you. I was terrified of that thing. Only vacuum I was afraid of. More than once when staying overnight there I wet the bed because I was scared to walk past the vacuum to use the bathroom. It got bad enough they put a bedside commode in the guest room with a curtain around it for me to use at night.
She also lived in a trailer that they added onto and for some reason I was scared of the main bedroom that they built on. I was also scared of the extra room that was added on but never fully completed at my grandmother’s house. No idea why but I rember thinking they were both creepy. The add on at my great grandmother’s house was fully finished and the only different between that and the rest of the house was there was a step down to enter the room. That wasn’t what bothered me though because the living room was also a step down and I wasn’t scared of that room.
Playing with or touching my belly button. My mom put it into my head that if I messed with it, it would unravel and my insides would fall out.
Those old porcelain dolls that look like small children with curly hair, frilly dresses and bonnets. Nope nope nope.
I still do not want them in a room with me. I can handle other dolls (I collect figurines) but not this one.
The ginger bread man. I was in elementary school and someone was dressed up as the ginger bread man and he ran around the school and jumped through windows and they told us he lived in the woods nearby. He ended up chasing me down the hallway when I was on my way to the bathroom. I was scared to go to the bathroom for months after that.
The “THX” noise from the intros to certain old movies, specifically the star wars original trilogy which my brother was obsessed with. My dad used to crank up the volume during that and I would hide behind the couch covering my ears.
I was scared of dial up because I thought the screaming sound was the Phantom Ghost from the Scooby Doo movie the cyber chase. I saw the movie around the same time as we got our first computer and my friend on the playground told me the movie was based on a true story, so I somehow got it in my head that the virus in the movie was actually the AOL company
Pillsbury biscuits, I buy them frozen now.
Swimming in pools alone. I thought an octopus was going to come out of the drain and get me. No clue where that came from but I was scared.
Going to the bathroom alone. I thought IT (clown) was going to come up to get me. Specifically contort and mangle my body so it could pull me down the drain.
Scarecrows. I have a reoccurring dream that a scarecrow balls up my parents, shoves them in a burlap sack, and takes them away.
The Marilyn Manson picture with him in latex prosthetic. My older cousin used to terrorize me with the picture.
Ceiling fans use to freak me out so much. I had this constant fear that one day it would just come loose and fall straight down on my head.
There was a cartoon called super friends and one episode featured a villain named Gentleman Jim. He was a ghost from the 1800s that would fly around with this wand and if he touched you with his wand, he would turn into a ghost too. It scared the living crap out of me. I would hide behind the couch watching it.
I was scared of closing my eyes in the shower, because if I did then the water coming out of the showerhead would turn into tiny snakes 😂
Garbage trucks. I used to have dreams that garbage trucks would chase me into school and try to run me over. To this day, I still get creeped out sometimes over the sound of a big truck in the dark. Just this morning I rushed my dogs inside before the one coming down the road passed.
Avocados
Claudia from the Amanda Show 😭 no idea why but she gave me nightmares
I was 10 when I first experienced heart burn, I thought I was having a heart attack
The Kool Aid mascot.
In 1970, Freddie Jones played Sweeney Todd in Tales of Mystery and imagination, which I watched. I was 11.
The next day, we went to a local gymkharna/country show. My mother went to get ice cream, and when I turned round to see her, Sweeney Todd was sitting in the deck chair right behind me. I legged it, and I’ve never watched it again.
The toucan sam on fruit loops. They made him pop out just a little bit so the eyes would follow you and it scared the crap out of my brother and I
Lol. When I was a young child probably under 5 years old, I started having nightmares about this big open mouth chasing me to eat me. There was no face at all. I would wake up screaming about “the wide open”. My family didn’t understand.
Years go by and I finally figured out where it came from. My sister and brother were teens during that time. They listened to the Rolling Stones. Of course the Rolling Stones have a big mouth with teeth and a tongue as there logo.
I love the Rolling Stones now. It took a while to figure out where that nightmare came from.
Large Marge
That episode of the Simpsons where Lard Lad becomes alive. I used to hide behind my sofa. I literally still cannot watch that episode because of how scared I was when I was young.
When I was about 4 the Pepcon explosion occurred here in Vegas. Loudest sound I’d ever heard and I’ll always remember running outside and seeing the mushroom cloud.
The neighborhood bullies convinced me it was a flower that exploded because sometimes “that just happens” lol… So for the next couple of days I side eyed flowers I’d walk past like “wtf?”… What made them explode like that? There were so many!
😂
I put the book “The Shining” in the freezer.
Michael Jackson. Even worse, I was told if I touched bleach, I would turn into him.
Not me, but my son at 6 yo wouldn’t go to bed because he was scared. When I got him to calm down he told me in the quietest whisper he could manage, that he was afraid of hypocrites. He thought they could fly into his room through the window.
Although in reality hypocrites aren’t always harmless.
Mrs. Doubtfire 😭😂
Definitely the X-Files theme!
My browser used to start whistling it when he wanted to scare me…
Sharks in a pool. Not the ocean, but a a backyard pool. I could see the bottom. The water was clear. Yet I was still afraid.
Someone in our area “lost” his python and it was found in a neighbours’ plumming. Iircl it bit a neighborhood guy in the nuts or balls from the toilet. Now everytime I sit down on the toilet I imagine a python or even piranha’s biting me in the vajay. I sometimes think I’m nuts.
Snake draft excluders at the bottom of inside doors
When I was very young (maybe 5 or 6) I tried to call my friend on the phone to invite them over to play. I misdialed and the person who answered RIPPED MY HEAD OFF, like full adult tantrum.
My parents were very kind and loving and rarely raised their voices. I was a good kid who didn’t like getting in trouble. So this absolute stranger yelling at me was so unexpected and upsetting that to this day, I hate making phone calls. It’s visceral.
Freddy Krueger haunted me my entire childhood and into my teen years. I even had a reoccurring nightmare he was my boyfriend and I had to sleep with him so he wouldn’t kill me. Tell me that’s not some deep routed strange shit!!!
The Brave Little Toaster movie terrified me. Manholes still scare me but I would never walk over one as a kid.
Mirrors.
Especially mirrors in the dark.
I’ve always feared I’d see something.
You know those staircases with gaps between each step? Those. I was too scared to walk on them until my teens, and even then for a bit I had to hold the banister and not look down
The huge light in the pool. I thought it was some kind of portal to the ocean and jaws was going to come out and eat me
Ok going to sound weird, but if you’re Gen X you will know.
As a kid being terrified of quick sand.Like quick sand was going to be a large danger in our lives! Also Bloody Mary. 🤣
Hand dryers in public bathrooms.
I was terrified of the fraggle rock. And if I’m being honest, as a 45 year old, I still am scared!
I don’t remember if it was an snl skit or what but I remember coming downstairs late one night because I couldn’t sleep when I was like 6 or something and my parents were watching some kind of sketch comedy show and in this instance it was a parody of Dora the explorer (like just screengrabs of the show with a different voice over I think) and I remember this fake Dora swearing or saying something like “don’t question it just ***** do it” and idk why but it scared the shit out of me I had actual nightmares about evil Dora coming after me at night. Looking back it’s so funny I have no idea what about it scared me so much because I was a huge Cartoon Network kid and was very not easily scared by stuff like that. Good times
My granddaddy’s guest bathroom sink made the most awful sounds when it drained. It sounded like a monster gurgling and growling. I’d fill it up washing my hands, then pull the plug and run away. It simultaneously terrified and delighted me.
Robocop
My cousins lived in the country. The noise the insects made at night scared the bejesus out of me.
The Fox logo and THX’s deep note. Basically any big, dramatic noises.
My basement.
Animatronics, but especially Showbiz (Chuck E Cheese’s for anyone not born in the 80s I guess). The gorilla on the keyboards scared me the most. Those jerky body and head movements and the way eyes moved on animatronics from then were so creepy to me.
The chuck e cheese animatronics scare me to this day
The E.T. movie
Thunder. I was a dumb kid haha. Also the paint dragon from the page master movie!
Tremors. I was convinced they would break through the ground and get me.
A few years ago, when I was in my mid 30s, my mom asked if I remembered when I was younger and was scared of grass. I was pretty dumbfounded by what she was talking about it until it clicked. No! I was afraid of giant man eating worms bursting out of the ground and grabbing me! I stayed on rocks and concrete.
And for multiple decades my parents though I was afraid to touch grass as a kid hahaha
The Chucky Cheese animatronics. I’m still side-eyeing them to this day. What are they gonna do when the power goes out?
My mom had this boyfriend when I was around five or six who loved to grab me by one arm and one leg (right or left side it didn’t matter) and swing me around the front yard so fast I couldn’t breathe and even crying and screaming to stop he would laugh like it was great fun. I can remember hiding whenever he was around because I didn’t want to be swung around.
I think this is the catalyst of why I am scared of Rollercoasters or any fast carnival ride today. That’s what I’m scared of that didn’t really do any lasting harm.
“The Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin.
I thought moss was ultra-poisonous and could kill you near instantly. My grandmother had this little desktop water fountain statuette, with three little pools that the water would flow through on it’s way down to the pump. It had a jolly little guy with a Chinese straw hat and a fishing pole, real miniature straw and stuff. There was a lovely network of piled moss that covered almost the entire thing, it just got thicker or thinner in places.
I was a wee child, and my grandmother wanted to impress on me how important it was that I cannot be trusted near the fountain, there were far too many things I could break carelessly. What she told me was:
“If you touch THIS [motions arms wildly around fountain for a few seconds]… You’ll DIE.” And then she shot me that “I’m watching you” gesture, pointing back and forth at our eyes. What I believe she intended to convey was “if you touch this, I will kill you”. What I instead interpreted was “if you touch this, IT will kill you”.
So, naturally I thought that meant that the weird amorphous green fuzzy shit that she just kept out in the open, on a table in a hallway in the middle of her house, could lethally poison you with a single touch.
Australia, or anything associated with it like kangaroos or someone saying g’day mate. I can’t explain it
The song ‘Roundabout’ by Yes. I still don’t know why it scared me.