Writer's Block: Too scary!!

[ladysprite]

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Showers.

I was raised Jewish, and someone - I don't remember quite who - told me when I was very little that Hitler killed all the Jews by telling them that he was sending them to the showers, and then poisoning them with gas.

I was all of four or five years old, and somehow this all mushed together in my exceedingly hyperactive imagination, until I was quite certain that Hitler was going to sneak into the bathroom and swap out the water in the shower for poison gas, and kill me because I was Jewish. I refused to take showers until I was... I don't remember how old; at least eight or nine. I'd only take baths instead; for some reason they weren't nearly as scary. I think the shower curtain was part of it; there's something about the limited field of vision that makes it entirely possible for stealth Nazis to invade without your notice.

Of course, I was also terribly afraid of monsters, the basement, sentient green ooze, triffids, and one particularly unusual Shel Silverstein poem, and my sister spent at least a year afraid of Jesus (another friend explained that He would take her to burn in H-e-double-hockey-sticks for being Jewish).

We were odd children.....

Comments

[geochick.livejournal.com]

Actually, those are extremely specific (and, in terms of kid-logic, well-reasoned) fears. Mine were a bit more amorphous. Mostly they revolved around the "things" that I knew were getting into my room at night, especially if the room were fully dark or any part of my body was not concealed by covers. The only "thing" that had a very specific shape was the shadowy, creepy guy in a big hat and a trench coat who came in for the sole purpose of removing my favorite stuffed animal/sleep toy from my arms. (Well, how else could they always end up in the floor by morning?)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

"...the shadowy, creepy guy in a big hat and a trench coat..."

Well, at least he didn't have a gas mask, or I'd be wondering how you'd seen a drawing of Sandman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandman_(Wesley_Dodds)).

[serakit.livejournal.com]

I had the fear of shadowy amorphous "things" too-- I used to make up elaborate protections around the bed and rituals that had to be done right before bed so that the things couldn't get me. It got better when my parents gave in to my desire for one of those gauze canopies (think purple mosquito netting) around the bed; the giant purple rhinestones on it reflected the things away.