Childhood Phobias

Do you have anything unusual that you are absolutely terrified of?

Heights, bugs, terrorists, crowds, snakes, public speaking, rollercoasters, airplanes, etc.

How about being afraid of something as a child that you have grown out of over the years or even just recently?

Some people are scared of dogs as children - understandable. They are big and slobbery and loud and sometimes they even bite. Some people are scared of clowns - semi-understandable. They are masked people with abnormally sized noses, mouths & hair. Plus there is the ever present abnormality in the Stephen King classic IT that adds to peoples fears.

I was afraid of men with facial hair. Not men in general, men with facial hair. It was so bad that I even avoided certain family members at gatherings because they either had a beard or mustache and they scared me. I knew who they were, but they freightened me horribly. The father of my best friend at church would even grow a beard every winter and I would avoid him for about 3-4 months. Obviously this is not an extreme fear of mine anymore, but it existed and unfortunately...

...I have passed it onto my daughter. We journeyed to the mall yesterday to have our picture taken with Santa. She cried worse than she did on Monday morning when they took her blood at the hospital. We took the picture anyway after two separate attempts to visit Santa. I wasn't that impressed with the Santa figure because he made ABSOLUTELY NO EFFORT TO CONSOLE OR WELCOME MY DAUGHTER. He wouldn't offer her puffs or a bottle to lure her into his lap. He just stared at her - literally. Jeremy would move closer to him and she would grasp Jeremy's shirt even tighter. So partly, Santa is to blame, but mostly Emma's fear is inherited from her freako Mommy.

Merry Christmas all!