Childhood Fears

[poliphilo]

Fabi is terrified of the rabbits. He can't be in the same space as them. He can't even be in the room next to where they are.  He insists they bite- though I don't believe one has ever bitten him. Perhaps we warned him they bit when he was a toddler to stop him from poking them in the eyes. You never know with kids what damage a well-intended, thoughtless word will do.

Kids are unaccountable in their fears. I remember I was scared to the same pitch of hysteria by a cartoon cowboy- and ventriloquist's doll- called Hank. When the theme music started I had about three seconds to run from the room before his dead-eyed puppet face, with its big droopy moustaches, popped out of nowhere and filled the screen. Hank was supposed to be a lovable character

What do you do?  Yesterday we went and sat in the back yard and all the time he was yelling and screaming about rabbits.  I took him into the ginnel- away from the rabbit- and he kicked the football for a minute or two, but then the horrors returned.

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

When I was very small, I remember my parents leaving me with my grandmother, sitting in a lawn chair under a maple tree. I remember it all distinctly, They had not got far, when they stopped to move a box turtle out of the lane and, realizing I had yet to encounter one, returned to the house and set it on the ground in front of me. My father's last words, before leaving again, were, "Be careful! He could bite a finger off".

I don't know how long I sat there, staring at the damned thing, but I was terrified, afraid it might leap up at any moment and attack my fingers. Eventually, I got up the nerve to bolt screaming for the house. Don't think I was necessarily scarred for life, but the memory has not faded in nearly five decades.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Adults forget that children take their lightest word as gospel.

We have to be awfully careful what we say to them.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Indeed.