Thursday's Writer's Prompt, Something that scared the HELL out of me as a child.

***ANNOUNCEMENT***

I really want to get to 700 followers by Christmas! If I can do this, I will be giving away one of my amazing upcycled coats! I know you all want one! Please, tweet my blogs, post my button on your blog, and help me reach my goal so that YOU can enter to win one of my extremely warm, one of a kind coats!

(Visit my etsy store button on the right.)

*************************************

Okay, so pretty much, you guys know how this works by now. On Thursdays, I link up with Mama Kat's writer's prompts and do that little hop/skip/jump thang.

My husband wanted me to choose the prompt "Describe something you did with your spouse when you dated but that you're now 'over'.." - specifically so that he could get onto a soap box about how when we dated, I couldn't get enough of his kisses, and now I N.E.V.E.R. kiss him unless I want something- so, it's something I'M over, not that HE'S over- and, admittedly, he's right. I don't kiss him much anymore. BUT in my defense, when I was little, my mom would kiss my cheeks and I would gag so hard I'd throw up. So it's not HIM, it's just that I'm not terribly fond of kissing in general and never really have been. When we were dating, I took what I could get. ~cough~virgin~cough~

Instead, I chose to write about something that scared the HELL out of me when I was a child.

I think this fear came to me partially from my grandmother, Mammy, who was, and still is, always very into the scary, the gory, the grotesque, the weird and the shocking. She read Stephen King, believed in ghosts, and let me constantly reorganize and arrange her shelf full of horror films. Last time we visited her, when trying to decide on a movie to see as a family, her vote was Alien vs. Predator.

It also partially came from my "BFF" in elementary school, ShayLyn, who fed my fears as though I was a giant bonfire that, if left to burn out, would leave the whole world to freeze to death. It scared the crap out of her, too though, and it didn't help that we lived under what we called "Airport 2"- a military training airport, where all manner of helicopters hovered over the neighborhood and surrounding vast, empty fields at any given time of day or night, the soldiers and airmen who jumped from said helicopters in their black and green BDU's and parachutes on an almost constant basis.

I was

TERRIFIED

of

Aliens.
The "gray" aliens with big black eyes and pasty skin, no nose besides those two little holes, and giant, bulbous, bald heads.
My Mammy treated me to movies such as E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Thing, Alien (all the Alien movies to be exact.) and Fire in the Sky- which was especially scary because it was supposed to be based on a true story and the man who had been abducted lived in Snowflake, Arizona- my grandmother lives in Phoenix, Arizona...I STILL have no idea how far away the two places are, but it was too close for comfort. My uncle, Glenn, apparently saw a space ship hovering over Arizona on his way to college one day. All Mammy thought about it was that it was "interesting."

(The cover of the movie "Fire in the Sky" ^^^^)

My parents didn't help much either, as they let me watch such fascinating things as Unsolved Mysteries, X-Files and, as pictured above, Alien Autopsy. It was like a train wreck. A sickening and incredibly fascinating train wreck.

I remember times where ShayLyn and I would run all the way home from school because a helicopter flew half way out to the field and then turned back around and our imaginations ran wild. We wouldn't play in the basement by ourselves (and when I say "basement", I mean, fully finished, fully furnished, my bedroom was down there, and the whole thing was lighted, heated and carpeted.) and ShayLyn swore that one night, at her grandma's house, she woke in the night to see colored lights spinning and flashing outside the window. She was sure they were here for her.

When I was growing up, at around 3 in the morning, what my dad called the "soft water" would...come on. It was like a whistling, hissing, clanking kind of sound that wafted through the whole house. I USUALLY slept through it. I remember only a handful of times that I heard it, but if i woke in the night, it was incredibly difficult to turn over and go back to sleep. I would hear foot steps outside my door- not really there, but coming closer, nonetheless, or see shiny black eyes outside my window. I slept with music to avoid these things, and was horrified if I heard the "soft water", which was, what I thought a mothership would sound like. Once, I remember getting the courage to jump out of bed and run like the wind up the stairs and into my parents bed. I remember that I was shaking so violently from my fear of it that, even at my ripe old age of near 10 years old, my mom cried "Oh, honey!" and let me curl up on her lap.

Into my early adult years, the fear still followed me. When I was engaged to my husband, we often drove up the canyon to look down on the valley and maybe make out a little. (Don't get too many ideas. Refer to my first paragraph about kissing my husband please.) My dear fiance knew all too well what I had told him about my irrational fear of aliens. But he hadn't seen it in action yet, and he thought it would be a great game to scare me a bit.

Sitting in his truck, he leaned over to look out the wind shield at the stars. "Hey, Brae...what's that up there? Do you think it's a satellite?"

I stiffened reasonably. I remember, because I felt it. "Probably" I said without looking up.

Brandon leaned even further forward, and I became very aware of the lack of traffic on our route. Aliens ALWAYS strike when there is no one around...or if there is corn. Where there is corn, there are aliens. I learned that from the movies. "No...it can't be a satellite. It's too close...but it can't be a plane, either, because it's going back and forth and....maybe even up and down."

Well, I'm no dummy, and I have a sixth sense that tells me when I'm in a horror movie and I shouldn't go up the stairs or split up from my friends. I am also not stupid enough to get stuck in an Alien movie and get myself abducted. Being in a horror movie is easy. You leave the house, and when you shoot the bad guy, you don't turn your back, because if you do, he'll grab your ankle. You can't get away from aliens.

So, I did what any girl does when she is terrified. And I started to cry, and I made him take me home.

Yes. He still married me, even though I'm psychotic. And he still indulges my fear fests whenever I bring home a new alien movie, such as Signs or The Fourth Kind (which, btw, is much more a possession/demonic type movie than an alien movie.) - it just means I snuggle with him a bit closer for a night or two. And I still hate to go down into our basement alone at night. ~shiver~

Losin’ It" a="">

*****************************************************

Like my blog? Please vote for me by clicking the button for Top Mommy Blogs! Thanks!