True, not trusting my siblings goes without saying! (or, heck, my dad for that matter)
We are geocachers. And rarely, for mischievous reasons, I’ll put a rubber snake by one of our hides. Someone reported one of those missing so when I went to check on it…
My wife still laughs about it.
Um, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s about a 9.5.
Really? Because the reason it scares the shit out of me is knowing it has no face!
My husband’s grandmother gave him an actual Chucky doll when he was a kid. She had no idea what it was. Her friend apparently got it out of a claw machine. She’s like, “I know it’s looks a little bit strange, but I thought you might like it.”
He said he looked at his Dad and they telepathically communicated… “Should we tell her? No, we should not tell her.”
I am on the spectrum and, while not afraid of balloons, I do not want to be around any games which involve them. Because any game which involves a balloon very likely involves a 
at some point, even if unintentional. Fireworks displays were also a problem for me, the salute in particular.
Balloons as decoration were and are fine, as long as I’m not around for cleanup.
That makes sense to me. I have a hazy childhood memory of distrusting balloons and [insert related but not 100% relevant] similar concerns. Yeah, by age 10 I was okay(ish), but to this day I’m sympathetic to viewing balloons with suspicion. I do not want balloons to pop in my vicinity and while I will recover, I will be momentarily upset if they do.
My only beef is that the parents didn’t warn us. All of our kids were in a school that specialized in accommodating learning differences. All mom/dad had to say was, “Dani is looking forward to Charlie’s party so much. I should warn you that he is very fearful of balloons. If you are planning on having balloons at Charlie’s party, we should talk about how that can work without disrupting the party.”
In other words: I completely understand balloon suspicion. What I don’t support is parents sending their balloon-freaked-out child to a birthday party without consulting us.
Yes, the parents were wrong not to check with the party hosts.
Still one of the best stories I’ve seen here. 
The same thing might have happened with me. All I remember is not being involved with any birthday parties outside of family members’ after refusing to be anywhere near a friend’s balloon-popping game.
Yeah.
I don’t mean by what follows to defend the parents. But I wonder …
I have little to no experience with neuro-spicy children. Not as a kid myself and not as an adult. But ISTM that their many unusual but absolute needs result in a family existence that is highly distorted from the statistical norm. But that, crucially, becomes the norm for that family.
So if they are to deliver little Billy to a public event run by others, how many of the (WAG) dozen special accommodations they make every day need to be mentioned? Do they even have a mental list of those accommodations, or is it, like the arrangement of their household furniture, just part of the background shape of their lives?
In this specific case, have they so thoroughly expunged balloons from their family’s life to the point that they essentially forgot that balloons are a common part of other kids’ birthday parties?
Hellifino.
Interesting theory! Who knows, maybe that’s the explanation.
Balloons are weird. “Happy birthday, here’s plastic sack of my breath!”
I wasn’t scared of balloons, but I was afraid they might pop. When I was in kindergarden, my school had a ‘spirit day’ that gave each class little competitions for some reason. For my class, we had to race each other across the gym to some chairs, where we were given a balloon to pop. This would reveal a slip of paper with a simple math problem…solve the problem, and you can run back across the gym to be with your classmates!
I didn’t want to destroy the balloon. It was pretty! What had it done to be popped? Why not just hand me the slip of paper with the math problem? And did I mention that, while this was going on, other classes were seated around the gym (I don’t remember there being bleachers, just metal folding chairs) screeching at us. I just sort of stood there, then halfheartedly sat on the balloon. I wasn’t heavy enough to pop it. 
One of the teacher’s aides finally popped it with her nails.
I hated spirit day.
I had all things Six Million Dollar Man…including the rocket/repair station. Which had an ‘Xray machine’ which had a glow in the dark skull.
With gave me the heebie jeebies. I had to hide it behind the dresser. (In retrospect, I’m not sure what that would have done for me.)
My older sister had a stuffed Tasmanian Devil (probably got it at Marriott’s Great America in Gurnee, Illinois back in the day). I also had a recurring nightmare of “waking up” and then seeing the Tasmanian Devil on the floor next to my bed, screaming at me. Not sure if the dreams predated the stuffed Taz but my sister freaked me out a couple of times at least by sneaking Taz into my room so it was actually really the first thing I saw in the morning. Mean!
We had a stuffed Tasmanian Devil. I had a knack for Skee-Ball, and played it at carnivals when I could, and usually walked away with a giant stuffed toy of some sort. Yep, I won Taz playing Skee-Ball.
Weirdly, our cats never had a problem with the assortment of doggies, tigers, bears, and other large carnival prizes that were around. (*) But they were definitely afraid of Taz, giving him a wide berth when their path took them past him. That worked well, actually, as Taz leaning against the couch stopped them from using the couch as a scratching post.
(*) They were only around for a bit. When we collected enough, we would eventually donate them to the pediatric ward of a local hospital, for the kids. We kept Taz though—he protected our couch.
Do garden gnomes count as toys? When my oldest son moved into his first rented house, I gave him a couple of zombie garden gnomes. One looked like it was clawing its way out of the soil.
He put it on his teenage daughter’s dresser, positioned so that she’d be facing it when she turned the light on. It got a startled scream, but caused no lasting damage.
Heheh, when I was in my 30s, I got a plush monkey toy somehow (I think I bought it at the zoo). It had bulging, staring plastic eyes. Our cat at the time was not a fan. He’d approach it sideways, looking at it out of the corner of his eye, then lash out furiously, It was eventually banished to the top of a closet somewhere where it couldn’t stare at him so intensely.
Over a decade ago in Jakarta I paid the equivalent of about $30 for the life-size carved cat pictured below. The price was annoying because in terms of Indonesian prices at the time it should have been much cheaper. I almost didn’t buy it because I knew they were overcharging me, but at the last minute I relented.
I’ve never regretted the purchase, as it has been hilarious over the years to see our animals react to it. At the time we had two dogs and two cats. Both dogs freaked out, barking at it hysterically the first time they saw it. One cat hissed at it. Just one cat (obviously the smartest one of the bunch) figured it out; she paid it no mind whatsoever.
I beg to differ!
My aunt used to collect those old dolls with china heads. I always found those freay.
After my grandmother died (she lived with my aunt and uncle), my aunt moved her entire collection of creepy Victorian-era dolls into her old room. Most of them faced the door, so when you went in the room, you found a mob of scary antique dolls staring accusingly at you.
I tried to not go into that room.