I had (have) a rather large list, but one has stayed with me. Stairs without the down bit, just massive gaps you feel like you could fall through.
Yep, first thing that came to mind.
not going to lie, i was a little disappointed they were in cars.
Pretty much all those babies look terrified beyond belief, some are just too petrified to scream.
My wife has claustrophobia. Last time we were in a car wash, she had a panic attack and tried to leave the car. I had to hold her down and remind her to use her self-hypnosis. Fortunately that worked, but it was a tense five minutes.
When I was a kid, I loved the car wash, it felt like an amusement park ride, and it was a rare treat because my parents weren’t spending good money on an automatic wash when they had their own automatic wash, AKA two kids, a hose and some sponges.
Now I’m just happy to have a minute to check my messages.
I, too, was excited and fascinated by automated car washes, elevators, escalators, conveyor belts, baggage carousels…
Sometimes I think the fear doesn’t arise from the car wash itself, but from the companion that the baby is experiencing said incident with (see Billy and his uncle above). I never trusted my older brother when he would say “It’s fine”, because more than half the time it wasn’t fine (he did enjoy introducing me to potentially traumatizing/injurious situations).
As a youngling, I may have tied up a high-speed high-rise elevator or two riding it for the fun of it. And one of those transparent-walled elevators, or old open metal cage elevators? Nirvana.
You can’t fall through the missing risers… but you can be dragged through them by the maniac hiding under the stairs, just waiting to grab your ankles.
“It’s full of suds!”
Yep
Still do, I guess. Power lines are so thin I can’t really tell how far away they are or how far they are off the ground when I’m driving, and occasionally it looks (to me) like I’m about to drive right into one.
Not when I was a kid, but I do now. It’s not a childhood fear, but the very real expectation that someone will shout obscenities at me or throw garbage at me just for walking down the street.
I’m from the Midwest. There were no unexpected tornadoes, just expected tornadoes. Eventually I got so used to tornadoes that I’d stand outside on the porch during tornado watches.
Here are my random fears:
- Revolving doors: Someone will distract me as I’m about to go in the door, but my arm will still be in the door. The door keeps going, and I don’t. My arm gets crushed in the door, and the door can’t go backwards.
- Steam grates in the sidewalks: They’re usually safe… usually… but what if they slip out of place while I’m walking over them?
- Escalators: I have actually gotten my shoelaces chewed up in an escalator. It’s still traumatizing.
- Open plan offices: These are somehow really spot-on indoor agoraphobia simulators.
I once had a manhole cover give way under me when I stepped on it. (No injuries, but it scared the bejeezus out of me.) Intellectually, I know that the conditions under which that occurred were highly unusual and unlikely or impossible to be reproduced, and yet…
I also was terrified of elevators as a kid, and still have nightmares about them… but not about being trapped or them falling, just about not being able to get it to stop at the floor where I need to go (when I’m late for a final exam for a class I haven’t been attending and is necessary to graduate). Even as a kid the fear was more about the threat of the doors closing between me and my parent and being whisked away alone to some unknown place.
Am I the only one who thinks this kid is having a deja vu moment. He is thinking, I remember this trip and damn, they are going to slap me when I reach the light.
Oh sure, just bring those out now that they’re actually completely valid, along with race-to-the-bottom WiFi supremacy being the one middle class citizen on the planet and making 2014 devices (switching to a device that runs on my disdain from now on, natch) take 40 minutes to send text, and stuff!
The service economies that eat everything and then aren’t much for holding. That’s the aqua mat entrance bottom-lining it for us. Or whoever wanted it installed.
Love the ‘unexpected’ on tornadoes. My tornado, my tornado, my tornado, UNEXPECTED TORNADO IN THE BAGGING…kinda small there. Mine was more of a…
Where do I put phosphate prophylactic coatings for supposedly fire-bridging mown (highwayside) areas? Above regular-mesh (defs not triangular tho.) steel-frame tierstories like malls, or competitively below? Below the iron-dome laser hail defense startup for Nebraskexas and their hailstorms?
Babies going through tunnels in cars reminds us of that scene from “2001”
Tunnel baby’s concern is understandable.
Train goes into tunnel
[Checks object constancy]
No more train.
I go into tunnel
I HAVE CEASED TO EXIST!!
Thank you, that helps a lot.
Next stop a Baby Yoda Mashup…
