Childhood Terror

I have a question for you, blog friends.

Do you have something that happened to you in childhood that should not have been a big deal but ended up putting an irrational life-long fear into your heart?

Or is that just me?

When I was about 5 years old, I saw 2 minutes of an episode of Picket Fences and it legitimately scarred me for life.

Yes, that's right, Picket Fences. I didn't even know what Picket Fences was about until I just looked it up on IMDB. Because I've only ever seen those traumatic 2 minutes.

Let me take you back.

It's approximately 1990. I'm sitting in my dad's room in my pink nightgown with the bear in a tutu on it while my dad mills about, doing some busy adult thing. He left the TV on and the show we were watching ended. I sat sucking my thumb as I wondered what would come on next.

Cut to the TV. A little girl is at Show and Tell in her elementary school classroom. She begins to tell the class all about this incredible object she found in her back yard. The background music begins to swell. She pulls out the object and it is a human hand floating in a jar.

At this point, I am paralyzed with fear. The theme song comes on, the credits roll, and it cuts back to a sheriff discussing the little girl's hand with his deputy. They explain that there is some kind of criminal on the loose who is cutting off people's hands as souvenirs of his criminal activity.

At this point, my dad turns off the TV and tells me to go to bed.

It was a while before I got to sleep.

Now, to preface this, I was under a few wrong assumptions at this point. One, I thought that being put under amnesia and simply falling asleep were the same thing. So, I thought someone could perform surgery on you while you were asleep as long as they didn't jostle you around enough that you would wake up. Two, I thought that it was possible that someone would want to just cut off people's hands and keep them. I now realize that the criminal in the show was most likely killing the people and then taking their hands, but that is not what I assumed at 5. I thought that there was someone out there in TV land, breaking into people's homes, cutting off their hands and leaving them to wake up handless.

I went to bed that night with a plan. I decided to sleep with my entire body covered by my blankets, except my head. If they had to move the blankets to get to my hands, I would obviously wake up. And since this fictional criminal only wanted my hands, not to kill me, he would run away when I woke up. (I kept my feet covered as well, just in case.) My plan was full-proof.

I never woke up to a hand-stealing mad man, but I carried the fear with me. I continued to sleep completely covered. Years later, when I rationally knew this was all idiotic, I still couldn't sleep if my hands or feet were not under the covers.

Nearly 20 years has passed since this incident, and I would like to say I've moved on. I understand that nobody is going to cut off my hand. But I still sleep completely covered by the blankets. Because it's comfortable, and a little piece of that anxiety hangs on.

Thanks a lot, Picket Fences.