Your Bone-Chilling, Piss-In-Your-Pants, Completely Absurd Childhood Fear

I’m no expert, but kids are brave little shits. Not much frightens them—or, for those lucky enough to experience a pleasantly mundane childhood, very few real-world concerns evoke fear in their hearts. That changes as we age. I’d take ghoulies, ghosties, and goblins over the unbearable weight of student loan debt any day.

One Halloween season when I was a kid, maybe seven, at the time living in San Antonio, Texas, I waltzed into my parents’ room unsupervised and turned on the television. I caught the first half of the 1998 horror film Bride of Chucky, the fourth installment of the Child’s Play franchise. I was naive and took the movie to be about Tim Burton-esque dolls in love. This mistake proved to be traumatizing, and for many years I’d cringe at the sight of Chucky (unfortunately the films are popular and Chucky dolls are plentiful in novelty shops. You can absolutely find one at a Spencer’s in your local mall to this day).

I eventually got over it, but boy did it fuck me up for a while. Prior to that irrational fear of murderous dolls, my only little kid trepidation was being around dudes in mascots, like, Chuck E. Cheese, because I once saw this Easter bunny take off his head.

And now I want to hear about your absurd childhood fears. What made you wet the bed and call out for your guardian?

Before we get spooky, let’s hear those insane party stories from last week:

MadPiglet got fucked up on love (and tequila):

The last time I drank tequila was in 1996. My BFF/roommate and I went to a party at a friend’s apartment. BFF was going to tell a boy she was in love with him, not knowing that he had chosen that occasion to announce his super-gayness. Whoops!

So BFF, who was a bit new to drinking, decided to do tequila shots and asked me to match her, shot for shot so she didn’t feel like she was overdoing it. This was a bad idea for many reasons, up to and including the fact that I weighed about 50 pounds less than she did. So we did. I lost track of what happened to her shortly after that but I found out later that there were tears all around. D’oh.

I ended up in the bed of a very good friend, who was guarding me (not from sexual assault, but from amorous couples looking for a soft surface). He eventually fell asleep beside me (on top of the covers like the gentleman he is) and at some point in the night, we found each other.

Like, “found” each other.

I woke up with my shirt on backwards and the solid knowledge that this was the dude I was going to marry. I’d never even REMOTELY considered him as a boyfriend before, but… there was a full moon, there was tequila, and roughly 4 years later, we got married. Just passed our 18th anniversary and I have never done tequila shots since that night.

whitekidinflatbush confirms that more people should throw parties for their homes:

Many moons ago, before a neighborhood in my big city became crazy gentifried, there would be gay after parties in abandoned warehouses after closing time. It was like a speakeasy and you had to be on a list to get in, then enter via a freight elevator. Then you could order drinks and there were aerialists and other performers who would use the parties to practice or showcase their talents. My best friend and I went the first weekend I had moved downtown and it was like a surreal fever dream. I went a few more times and it was always a mix of the “hot” club kids and hippies. One time I met a young woman who was dressed like it was 1912 because she was throwing a 100th birthday party for her house. I’ll never forget my best friend and I dancing ‘til 5 A.M., then waking up four hours later to work a Sunday shift at our retail job, because we were 21 and 25 back then and to be young and energetic is its own super power.

RedScharlach woke up in rodeo cowboy hell…or is it heaven?:

When I was in graduate school there was a big rodeo in a nearby town, and a casual acquaintance (a friend of an ex-boyfriend, of all things) who lived there invited me to go with him. I’m not sure why I agreed to go, as I wasn’t interested in rodeos or in him, but for some reason I packed my overnight bag and went. Turns out he was somehow friends with a bunch of the rodeo cowboys and they were all going to be staying at his house too.

The details of the evening are definitely fuzzy— I do remember narrowly escaping a local bar after the rodeo cowboys drunkenly instigated a huge bench-clearing brawl— but it must’ve been quite the party, because when I woke up in the morning I opened up the bedroom door to find passed-out naked rodeo cowboys everywhere. Draped over all the furniture, curled around the toilet, sprawled on the shower floor. Some of them had on their boots or hats and there were, like, bits of cowboy paraphernalia scattered all around the house.

I’ve woken up in some strange places but that one definitely takes the cake.

For poor PenguinLust2:ElectricBoogigloo, the dog ate the birds:

Spring/Summer, 1986. I am a junior. My best friends parents are out of town. We schedule a party, the word spreads. We have a band scheduled (the core members of this band would later on become actual recording artists – you have heard of them). We had to prepare “Jen’s” house.

It was a big ranch with an awesome bar in the basement. This would be party central. But they had this antique bird cage and 2 snow white doves that lived in it. It had to be moved because that is where the band would go. We took it down and put it in a bedroom that had a jack and jill BR. We locked the doors from the hall and the bathroom, but folks could still use the other bedroom and access the bathroom from there.

She also had a cute labradoodle type of dog who was loving and not a problem at all for this event.

Fast forward several hours. We are now stoned, drunk, and the party is smoking. We got seniors there, graduates, and the band is rocking. Then “Christian Laettner”, 1 year post grad guy, comes flying down the stairs. He screams “THE DOG ATE THE BIRDS”. Jen and I are having a blast, and are very confused about what the hell he is talking about. Again, “THE DOG ATE THE BIRDS”.

We run upstairs. Someone had gone in the bathroom and opened the door to the bedroom housing the doves. The dog found them. The dog busted the cage, killed the birds, and sat on the floor with a little blood on his paws and feathers around his mouth. There was bird pieces everywhere.

We laughed for about 5 minutes, then started cleaning up. It was really late by this time and the crowd was thinning. Band packed up. And we were alone with the bird murdering dog, a broken antique cage, and no doves.

The next day we finished the clean up job, glued the cage back together, and used the money we made from the door charges to buy 2 new snow white doves.

Her parents never knew.

erindipity learned and lived an orgy that night:

My flatmate and I had a housewarming.

We’re pretty outgoing people but not outrageously kinky.

We invited about 20 people. Few drinks, we had about 5 friends (queer mates all around) put on a fully-fledged, impromptu drag show complete with costumes, choreography and seating. We had usual dancing comps, jelly shots and a huge-ass punchbowl.

Then people started to leave, about 10 or so left.

Spin the bottle turned into strip spin the bottle, turned into naked Twister, turned into a full-fledged orgy in our living room. I was about 19, had barely dipped my toe in the water sexually and I had sex with three people that night, all genders in on the action.

To this day I still ask myself if I dreamed it.

RealFlamingjune tripped balls and somehow produced an adorable story out of it:

My favorite party, ever, was one when I was 20. I had a crush on a guy I worked with, we had a couple of drunken make out sessions but I had decided to move on. He decided he was in love with me. He and his housemates threw a Halloween party and, as one walked in, there was a delightful cherub doling out mushrooms. We all chose to partake and had a ball. At the end of the evening, we were wrapping things up, sitting on the stairs, telling stories. One of the women worked as a waitress at what was one of our favorite restaurants, a lovely Greek place in the U District in Seattle. She told us the name of the lemon flavoring in avgolemono was called “Lemon Make-Believe” and it was “the most yellow stuff” she had ever seen. I laughed so hard I wet my pants. I then went on to marry the dude, had a son together, later divorced. But he’s still one of my most favorite people ever.