# Parents inadvertently scare you for life? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 5, 2012, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538 "2012-01-05T20:10:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fool_in_the_Rain)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/21 "2012-01-10T17:33:04Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > And that is why you \*never \*tell children “Grandma went to sleep . . .” > > Just remembered: when my grandmother died, my Mom got a sympathy card reading, “She is not dead–she is merely asleep.” “_Christ!_” Mom said, “and we \*buried \*her!” Was your Mom a child when she got the card? That would be eerie, never mind the fear a child would feel going to bed at night… ---
**Author:** ![Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fool_in_the_Rain)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/22 "2012-01-10T17:36:55Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > I have had nightmares of being burned alive for years. > I had no idea where they came from till I saw Bambi again in college. > Looking at IMDB, I realized the last time it was in theaters, I was slightly over a year old. Huh, I always thought Bambi’s Mom getting killed (and it being obvious even to a child) would be disturbing enough. It never occurred to me the forest burning would be disturbing, but I can see how it affected you. ---
**Author:** ![Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fool_in_the_Rain)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/23 "2012-01-10T17:42:23Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > Yes. Like you, my parents took me to a drive-in movie, but they didn’t know that the subject matter was too strong for kids. The movie was _The Naked Prey_, and it featured many imaginative, realistic and terrifying torture scenes. It scared the holy fuck out of me and I threw up in the back of the station wagon. Unlike you, I still feel oogy nowadays if I happen to watch a bit of this old movie on television. > > My parents said they thought it would be a nature movie about African wildlife! Wow! Jaws was bad enough, I can imagine that can really screw with a kid’s head. > [@tdn](#): > > Slight hijack: When I managed a movie theatre, I saw parents bringing their young kids to see _The Emerald Forest_. We tried to tell them that it had nudity, violence, and cannibalism, but they insisted that because of the title it must be Disney. So I’ve done my part to scar young lives. > [@Jamicat](#): > > That was “The Emerald Jungle” > [http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/product.asp?sku=D32456](http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/product.asp?sku=D32456) > > I saw this in Theaters before it was banned. 🆒 Either one…disturbing ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/24 "2012-01-10T19:02:12Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > My parents transported the damned overgrown cockroaches in a cooler in the back seat of their car. Grandma Bodoni and I were also in the back seat. The lobsters showed some inkling of self preservation, they tried to crawl out of the cooler. They were BIG lobsters, too, and seemed to be mostly claws. I was convinced that they were going to give me a good pinch. > > Good thing that Grandma Bodoni was there, she wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense, not from lobsters, not from ANYONE. She just kept putting them back in the cooler. Granny Bodoni sounds bad ass but she couldn’t figure out how to shut a cooler? ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/25 "2012-01-10T21:25:55Z")
That was just one of those foam coolers and I don’t remember that it even HAD a lid. It was just used as a carrying device, as opposed to carrying the lobsters in one’s bare hands. And Grandma Bodoni WAS badass. So was Grandpa Bodoni. ---
**Author:** ![FlyByNight512](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/82dd89/32.png) [@FlyByNight512](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyByNight512)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/26 "2012-01-10T21:46:00Z")
> [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](#): > > Huh, I always thought Bambi’s Mom getting killed (and it being obvious even to a child) would be disturbing enough. Heh. Yeah. I remember running out of the room in fear during that part when I was maybe four or five. That wasn’t scarring, though, what was scarring was my dad mocking me for it. :rolleyes: Because apparently it was a ‘waste of his time’ to put on a movie if I wasn’t going to sit through every damn minute of it. Thanks, asshole. ---
**Author:** ![limegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@limegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/limegreen)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/27 "2012-01-10T21:48:48Z")
When I was six, my mother took me to visit an older sister in Maine. We went to visit relatives in a huge old house by the ocean, and I fell asleep on the couch while all the adults were chatting. It was late afternoon, and as the sun set, the relatives invited my mother and sister up to the roof/balcony to watch the sun set, thinking I would be sound asleep for a while. They got to talking, and I woke up in pitch blackness, completely alone. They finally heard me screaming and came down to rescue me. To this day, walking into a dark house freaks me out. TURN ON A LIGHT!! ---
**Author:** ![Foxy40](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Foxy40](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foxy40)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/28 "2012-01-10T22:03:48Z")
Not my parents but a speaker at an assembly program when I was about 8 or 9. I don’t recall what the entire program was but he told the story about a mother who had dropped a hand mixer before putting it away. Her daughter decided to make a cake the next day and ended up electrocuting herself. To this day when I drop an appliance like a hair dryer, curling iron, mixer, even a cell phone that has to be charged, I can’t touch it or plug it back in unless I put on rubber soled shoes to prevent getting fried. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/29 "2012-01-10T22:29:12Z")
Oh, yeah, I remembered another one. When I was 11 or 12, my folks took me out of school for two weeks to accompany them on a driving vacation to Mexico that my dad wanted to take. I was told by schoolmates that I would be “strip-searched” for drugs at the border. I was a timid, modest girl and this terrified me. My mom asked what was bugging me, and I told her. Instead of reassuring me that this wasn’t going to happen, she just mocked me for being afraid - sang “_teela’s_ gonna have to strip!” at me and frightened me. Now I was doubly certain it was going to happen. The fact that it didn’t occur on the way down didn’t reassure me; I thought it far more likely that they’d do it on our recrossing when coming back north. When we were finally back in the states, I was able to calm down. They wondered why I wouldn’t eat down there and was miserable all the time, and I wasn’t going to tell them. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/30 "2012-01-10T23:07:15Z")
Not my parents, but when I was a small child, an insurance salesman came to the house – or was he a fire alarm salemasn? He vividly described a house fire, and I remember screaming and running from the room, crying. For decades, I was convinced that it was my destiny to die in a fire. I guess it wasn’t scarred for life, but scarred/scared for decades, as I don’t worry about it anymore. Though I do always have a fire extinguisher in the house, and unplug things when I’m not at home. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/31 "2012-01-10T23:08:47Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > Oh, yeah, I remembered another one. When I was 11 or 12, my folks took me out of school for two weeks to accompany them on a driving vacation to Mexico that my dad wanted to take. I was told by schoolmates that I would be “strip-searched” for drugs at the border. I was a timid, modest girl and this terrified me. My mom asked what was bugging me, and I told her. Instead of reassuring me that this wasn’t going to happen, she just mocked me for being afraid - sang “_teela’s_ gonna have to strip!” at me and frightened me. Now I was doubly certain it was going to happen. The fact that it didn’t occur on the way down didn’t reassure me; I thought it far more likely that they’d do it on our recrossing when coming back north. > > When we were finally back in the states, I was able to calm down. They wondered why I wouldn’t eat down there and was miserable all the time, and I wasn’t going to tell them. Oh, man, this makes me want to spank your mother. Shame on her! ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/32 "2012-01-10T23:46:06Z")
my parents let me watch “the fly” (the old one.) when i was 6. i was doing fine until his wife took the towel off his fly head. that was it for me. 5 years of reoccuring nightmares with my parents having fly heads; until i read “the fly” in a short story collection. my parents went to niagara falls when i was 1 ish. for years and years i had a reoccuring nightmare about a bridge that stops half way across a body of water. people, vehicles, and stuff going over the edge; with us sometimes going over, sometimes stopping just in time. years and years later in my twenties i went to niagara falls on the canadian side and saw the us side’s viewing platform…my mother said “remember when we visited?” “you were about one”. another nightmare solved. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2012, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/33 "2012-01-10T23:58:38Z")
I was the big sis, so I didn’t get to be scared of anything, but poor little sis… When we were really young (I can remember it, but she can’t) our great-grandfather, “old-opa” died. After that, little sis would sometimes suddenly become absolutely convinced, literally convinced she was going to die. And for the longest time we couldn’t work out why. It turns out it was the smell of Detol, that they had used around my “old-opa’s” body. She’s still a little scared of Detol to this day. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/34 "2012-01-11T00:37:25Z")
> [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](#): > > Was your Mom a child when she got the card? That would be eerie, never mind the fear a child would feel going to bed at night… No, my Mom was 60-ish and a wise-ass. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/35 "2012-01-11T02:16:09Z")
> [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](#): > > Huh, I always thought Bambi’s Mom getting killed (and it being obvious even to a child) would be disturbing enough. It never occurred to me the forest burning would be disturbing, but I can see how it affected you. Oh, it didn’t disturb me. I’m not afraid of fires, or anything. (Good thing, too, considering that I’ve been on fire a few times.) I just had these nightmares of being burned alive. Very specific fire pattern. Not very common, maybe two-five times a year, but they lasted for decades. I’d put it down to some primordial thing, and all of a sudden, boom, I see this _exact_ fire pattern again in Bambi. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I think it’s also probably much more impressive if you’re literally one year old and in an old-style movie theater. I don’t think I understood the plot really well, but I knew what fire was, and it was two stories tall. ---
**Author:** ![Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fool_in_the_Rain)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/36 "2012-01-11T14:35:45Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Oh, it didn’t disturb me. I’m not afraid of fires, or anything. (Good thing, too, considering that I’ve been on fire a few times.) I just had these nightmares of being burned alive. Very specific fire pattern. Not very common, maybe two-five times a year, but they lasted for decades. I’d put it down to some primordial thing, and all of a sudden, boom, I see this _exact_ fire pattern again in Bambi. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I think it’s also probably much more impressive if you’re literally one year old and in an old-style movie theater. I don’t think I understood the plot really well, but I knew what fire was, and it was two stories tall. So you saw an pattern in the fire when you were a child, and then that ‘pattern’ appeared in nightmares. To quote Spock, “Fascinating”. Do these nightmares continue today, or did they end when you realized where this pattern came from? ---
**Author:** ![Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fool_in_the_Rain)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/37 "2012-01-11T14:41:04Z")
> [@rocking\_chair](#): > > \ > my parents went to niagara falls when i was 1 ish. for years and years i had a reoccuring nightmare about a bridge that stops half way across a body of water. people, vehicles, and stuff going over the edge; with us sometimes going over, sometimes stopping just in time. > > years and years later in my twenties i went to niagara falls on the canadian side and saw the us side’s viewing platform…my mother said “remember when we visited?” “you were about one”. another nightmare solved. Hmm, I wonder. I used to dream (have nightmares) about going off a bridge that collapsed while riding in a car, I always attributed it to the time there was an accident we witnessed on the Newport Bridge when I was a child. No one went off the bridge, but it was a big mess. I’ll have to ask my parents if we went to Niagara when I was a kid. Straight Dope homework 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/38 "2012-01-11T15:01:45Z")
> [@Fool\_in\_the\_Rain](#): > > … > My parents took my brother and me(I?) to the drive-in movies (remember them?) back in '76 or '77. They used to play two movies then, I can’t recall what the other one was. They went to see _Jaws_. > I believe my brother had fallen asleep by then, but I hadn’t. (I was 7-8 years old, he was 4-5) I watched some of it, before diving under the blankets in the back of the station wagon, scared to all hell from watching Jaws tear up the boat with the lifeguard (where the kids sailboat capsizes in the ‘pond’). > Flash forward about 6 weeks, we vacationed in Virginia every other year with my father’s family. We went to Virginia Beach and well, my dad put me on his shoulders and started out into the water. I slowly began to panic, and when the water began to touch my legs, I hit the panic button and freaked. My father, not knowing what was wrong, let me down to check on me. I tore off towards the beach like there was no tomorrow. I refused to go into the water again the rest of the summer, yet wouldn’t say why. > Flash forward to adulthood. I still get that edgy tingly fear when I go to the beach, and occasionally I have to force down the panic that suddenly creeps up on me in the water. I’m 42 years old now, and I still squirm when I go to the beach. > The irony of it all is, whenever Jaws comes on TV, I am drawn to it like a moth to light, and will sit through the whole thing, and enjoy every minute of it. > I told my mother this story last year, and she felt awful, but we laughed over it afterwards. > > Anything like this happen to you? > [@teela\_brown](#): > > Yes. Like you, my parents took me to a drive-in movie, but they didn’t know that the subject matter was too strong for kids. The movie was _The Naked Prey_, and it featured many imaginative, realistic and terrifying torture scenes. It scared the holy fuck out of me and I threw up in the back of the station wagon. Unlike you, I still feel oogy nowadays if I happen to watch a bit of this old movie on television. > > My parents said they thought it would be a nature movie about African wildlife! Were parents really dumb about taking kids to the drive-in movies in the 70’s? For me it was ‘Carrie’ my parents were sure I would sleep through at age 6 or 7. We’d buried my Poppa Nick a few months prior and I awoke to see Carrie’s hand coming out of her grave. I sure pissed my folks off telling them Poppa Nick was still alive in his grave. Took years for me to look at a grave w/o visualizing a hand reaching out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/39 "2012-01-11T16:39:13Z")
I begged and pleaded with my parents for weeks, to let me watch it, all my friends had already and I knew the difference between make-belief and real…so they relented. And let their seven- year-old, blonde-haired daughter with long hair watch the movie _Poltergeist_. Now to be fair, they hadn’t watched it yet, so they didn’t know what was in it but I know for a fact my parents did not have sex in their bed at night for about three months. Because I was in there, every night. Followed closely by a friend’s mom, that rented _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ for her daughter’s eighth birthday party. ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2012, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538/40 "2012-01-11T17:06:05Z")
For me it was the movie Ghost Story. To this very day I am deathly afraid of ghosts which look like rotting corpses, and ghosts in general. And I don’t even believe in them. Saw The Ring and The Grudge when they came out and my fears were still in full force. The Shining I am _almost_ okay with. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-inadvertently-scare-you-for-life/608538.md?page=3)