Are you creeped out by something benign..something like clowns? Teletubbies?

[Mercule]

Not sure if it counts as benign, but I have a morbid unease about losing body parts, which leads to all sorts of weird things. The eyes, of course, as have been mentioned before. I can't wield a chainsaw and tend to be skittish around some heavy machinery -- which is really weird for a farm boy.

I've got no idea where it came from, but it's been with me most of my life. When I was six, I'd break into tears if I saw someone with a prosthetic arm. To this day, I'm a bit uncomfortable even driving by a prosthetics "store" when I see them. But I've adjusted well enough to being around amputees -- my uncle lost his leg years ago in a car wreck, but I enjoy getting hanging out with him.

Funny thing is I've got no real fear of death and I'm completely nonplussed by needles. I've given blood for no better reason than I walked by and saw they had coconut cookies (I love coconut).

Oh, yeah, and Teletubbies and, especially, Boobahs.

 

[BOZ]

well, i wouldn't call dismemberment benign...

 

[Hypersmurf]

Trains. Steam trains, specifically. I don't think I've ever seen one, but I read a story about a stray dog that got run over by one.

Huh.

There was a train station across the road from my high school.

About once every year or two, someone would get hit and killed.

But I have no problem with trains...

-Hyp.

 

[Mercule]

well, i wouldn't call dismemberment benign...

I was more thinking the oddball quirks that come of it, in my case. Amputees are pretty benign. It's not (usually) like they have leprosy or anything.

It's a stupid reaction on my part.

 

[Algolei]

Huh.

There was a train station across the road from my high school.

About once every year or two, someone would get hit and killed.

But I have no problem with trains...

-Hyp.

That reminds me--I don't know why--of frozen rivers. I'm afraid of walking on the ice because people fall through and drown. It doesn't matter that I know the ice is safe, or that the water is only three feet deep, or that I've experienced swimming in water that cold and it ain't that difficult.

By that definition, I suppose it's an irrational fear then.

 

[Uzumaki]

Another eye-related thing that freaks me out:

Car lights that look too much like eyes. I was driving to work yesterday, in the very early morning through the rain, and there was a car in front of me that was staring at me. The light had three parts, divided so they looked similar to a sclera (the white part of an eye), an iris, and a pupil. The sclera part and the pupil were on, so it looked just like a eye. Man, eyeballs must be the most terrifying thing in the world.

 

[Algolei]

Hey, cool! Headlights spook me too, especially when out walking at night. But they don't frighten me...not really. I just glare back. And try to make myself look big. Raarr!

 

[caudor]

Wow, this thread is still rolling along; thanks for all the replies.

I did forget to mention that my daughter is also deathly afraid of June Bugs. The little critters do have a bad habit of flying up and sticking on people.

One time when we were out on the boat fishing one flew into her hair and either fell or crawled down the back of her collar. I thought she was going to jump out of the boat!

Also, there was a little kid down that street that actually ate one, and that really grossed her out.

 

[diaglo]

Hey, cool! Headlights spook me too, especially when out walking at night. But they don't frighten me...not really. I just glare back. And try to make myself look big. Raarr!

my roommate in college would go jogging early in the morning. when he came back i'd wake up from all the noise.

one morning i got up without noise and late for class.

when i got back from class my roommate was passed out on his bunk.

i gave him a hard time about not waking me.

he told me he got run over. so i took him to the student clinic. and later to the hospital for a neck brace and surgery on his leg.

boy did i feel stupid. now he still won't go jogggin outside. he uses a treadmill instead. i call him a hamster.

 

[Halivar]

Public restrooms. 'Nuff said.

Water fountains. Once when I was five, my mom told me not to use them because someone with AIDS might have used it. This is way back before we knew anything about AIDS and thought you could get by touching people. Even after I knew that was silly, I had this conditioned fear of water fountains (or "bubblers", if you're of the mid-western persuasion). I got over this one about five years ago, but I still don't like them.

Taking the garbage out at night. Ever since I saw the movie C.H.U.D. as a child, I have had an apoplectic fear of dumpsters at night. My folks used to make me take the garbage out every night after dark, and the dumpsters for our apartment were arranged in a big square. If any Cannabalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers ever decided to jump out an eat me, I'd be surrounded. I swear, it would take me fifteen minutes of staring at the dumpsters from 50 feet away before I'd gather up the strength to make the mad dash to them, throw up the cover and sling the garbage in, and run as if my life depended on it because it did and the CHUD's were coming to eat me all the way back to the apartment building door. The thirty seconds I would spend at that door, waiting for it to buzz were absolutley the most terrifying moments of my life. I wouldn't look back of course, because I didn't want to see the CHUD's before they ate me. The dread terror of garbage removal persisted until I was 11, but an irrational fear of the night-time dumpsters persists to this day (once last year I caught my self running back to my apartment).