The fear that will follow me around til I die and mock me in my fearful death is E.T. THE ATARI game. It still makes me unsettled to this day, just playing it, and not because it was just a bad game. I think my original fear rooted in the fact that no one knew what was going on in the game, and things have to make sense to me even in a roundabout implausible way. If my brain says it’s Okay, this fits with our personal universe, then it works. E.T. didn’t… and the title screen!! Whenever someone put the game on to play … it would scare me so senseless… that creepy music at the beginning… *shiver* and I’d run out of the room, terror at my back.

Now there’s another fear that I didn’t get over until a few years ago… I was deeply and terribly terrified of televisions. Not tvs that are actually ON but the ones that are off, especially the old tube televisions. One of those sitting in the corner was enough to scar me for life. My parents had one in their bedroom and if for some reason I had to sleep in there, they would have to put a towel or blanket over the little tv. In fact, fear was so bad that I couldn’t even walk into a room with the tv off. This was because my grandmother used to talk at length how the tv was going to “blow up” and it would kill me. The screen would shatter and cut me to pieces and if lightning struck the television… no one would save you. It was instant death. Even after I knew this was all crazy old people raving, it was hard to chase those fear demons out. Thank goodness for flat screen type tvs. So less intimidating and less inclined to come to life and KILL YOU.

(Honorable mention in that movie goes to the very end when Gizmo’s original owner appears out of nowhere behind the mom to claim him back.)

That is all.