Childhood fears

Most kids are scared of traditional things: spiders and snakes, the Boogie Man, the dark. It is only recently that I've come to realize I was a little bit odd. My two biggest fears were:

1) that my dad would start smoking

and

2) that my dad would grow a mustache

I don't know why I ever worried about #1. We were always the family that had to be seated as far away as possible from the smoking section when we ate breakfast at Denny's (yes kids, when I was little, people were allowed to smoke in restaurants). Actually, we were usually the family that would get all settled at our table, order our drinks and lick our silverware and then realize the table was not going to work. You see, my Dad would get horrible headaches if he was anywhere near smoke. So if someone in the remote area lit up (which happened EVERY time), we'd have to get up, grab our silverware and parade sheepishly across the restaurant to a new table. Oh man was it ever embarrassing. Needless to say, I'm not sure why I ever worried about fear #1.

Fear #2, however, did actually come true. On a number of occasions. Whenever we went camping or on vacation actually. For whatever reason, my dad would take a break from shaving and decide to let his facial hair run rampant. I hated it and would cry and cry and cry and BEG him to shave. When that didn't work, I'd dig deep into my 10-year-old repertoire of insults and say mean things like "That mustache makes you look like Inspector Gadget" or "You look so OLD!" It never seemed to work and I would cry myself to sleep every night for about a week until my Dad would finally shave (I'm sure he figured it just wasn't worth the drama). Let me tell you, that mustache was super scary.

Today as I was out on a jog, I remembered a 3rd fear. This one maybe a little more "normal" but still a bit off the wall. I was running in the rain when I saw this van approaching. You know, those large, boxy vans with square windows? Basically the shape of the FedEx delivery truck only much creepier. This van was coming my direction and I immediately found myself wanting to run and hide. Only then did it all come back to me. As a child, I was horribly afraid of the dog catcher!! Blame it on one too many viewings of 101 Dalmatians but I was always worried that they were going to nab our sweet dog Mitzi. Didn't the dog catcher drive around in one of those vehicles? Anyway, sometimes I feared they would go as far as to come into our gated backyard and sweep her up with their nasty nets. I always assumed they made their rounds through our neighborhood just as frequently as the garbage truck, that they were wanting to fill the pound with everyone's little puppies (like the pound was in need of any more dogs...) Horror of horrors!

Oh to be a child again and to have these things be my top three fears!