5 Things that Scared Me as a Child

I was a very paranoid child, and in honor of Halloween I've decided to give you all a list of the things that used to scare me. Used to scare me. These things are totally not frightening anymore now that I am a grown up.  Totally. Not. Frightening.

There is literally no difference between the two

Dolls
There I was, an innocent little five year old channel surfing in the living room.  Little Green Platypus came upon a delightful movie about a doll.  It was even called Child's Play!  Perfect, right?  Suddenly every doll I came across was possessed by a serial killer.  All of my dolls were suspect.  This became complicated by the fact that both my mother and grandmother had a large collection of dolls, many of which had their home in my bedroom.  They didn't stay there for long after that.

Imagine this just
 wandering around

Annie
You would think that my fear of Annie stemmed from the dolls, but no.  Annie     was frightening long before the Child's Play fiasco.  Annie was the name of my mom's vacuum cleaner cover, and the back porch was her home.  I used to have   nightmares of her wandering around the house and talking to me. It wasn't until   middle school that I was able to convince myself that those nightmares were, in   fact, nightmares.  Guys, I lived through a good chunk of my childhood thinking   that Annie was actually alive.  The back porch was terrifying because of it.


Swimming in a Hotel Pool Alone
This one makes sense when you understand that I was pretty sure that there were sharks in hotel pools.  Perfect sense.  In a similar vein I didn't like going into hot tubs alone because I was pretty sure I would be sucked down the drain.

The Basement
In my childhood home the basement stairs came off of the back porch.  So I was already dealing with Annie every time I needed to go downstairs into the giant, dark, concrete room that was our basement.  There was also a tiny room all the way in the back of the basement (it probably functioned as a pantry at some point) and I was always pretty sure there was something hiding back there. Never saw anything of course, but I'm pretty sure there was a big scary monster back there. With glowing red eyes. And fangs.

My Furbie

You're soul. I want it.

I can't describe how amazing it was to unwrap that furbie on Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house.  He was literally the coolest thing ever.  I talked to him and he talked back. Guys, I was going to teach him things! I went to bed that night excited not only for Santa, but to meet back up with my new furry friend.
Imagine my surprise when I woke up to find him not on the counter where I left him, but in my grandparents' basement*.  When I asked what happened my cousin told me that he got up in the middle of the night and walked downstairs by itself. In reality, the thing kept talking all night and annoyed one of my family members and they took it downstairs. But the damage was done. Furby went into a cupboard and was never played with again.  


*Just as scary as my own basement, btw.