Most emotionally-scarring childhood experience?

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I've had quite a few childhood experiences that caused serious trauma. Once, when I was about three years old, sitting in the back pew of an old church, there was an old lady directly in front of me who was wearing a fox shawl with the head still attached. All during the service that fox just stared at me, the blank glass eyes eating a hole in my soul. I was absolutely terrified. I just tugging on my mom's sleeve but she just turned and gave me a dirty look and said, "Gustav....shhhhh!"

I just knew that fox was going to come to life and lunge at me, ripping my throat out before any of the horrified onlookers could have time to react. For years I had nightmares of being ripped to shreds by rabid foxes. I would always bolt upright in bed, sweating profusely and gasping for breath.

I have always felt that I walked alone with these memories, especially amidst the A2K crowd. I figured this was such an emotionally stable crowd, so well-balanced and mentally healthy that surely not one single member, excluding myself, could have suffered any serious emotional childhood trauma.

But I read something earlier that sent chills through me. Something an A2K member wrote that caused me to say aloud, "Oh my God! How could she have lived through that? Why is she not institutionalized?"

I speak of cyphercat.

Her haunting words still ring in my ears.....

Once when I was little and we were eating out I asked the harried waitress for something to color.

She hustled away and came back in a moment, and without a word slapped down a coloring page and one single crayon, orange.

That poor damn kid.

This thread is about healing. Where we shall discuss our childhood traumas and try to exorcise the demons.

And please take the time to give cyphercat a hug.

Tell her you care.

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I found out my mother was a lesbian and all the while she had been telling me I was the best lay she ever had......

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Every year there is a re-enactment of the british fighting the minutemen at the start of the revolution. Someone dresses as Paul Revere and rides through the night, faux-fighting breaks out in Lexington and Concord. It's on Patriot's Day, a day we have as a holiday and that most of you don't (nyahnyah). Of course most people think it's a holiday for the Boston Marathon, but that's another story.

I grew up near the Concord Bridge and some years we'd walk the path of the minutemen to the brdige and take in the festivities. Some years we'd drive. One year I got left behind. I was five.

And, probably the winter before that, my dad caused my two front baby teeth to die and drop out when he hit me with a hocky stick. He was goalie, I was skating behind him, he should have been fouled for high sticking when he took that shot. Or maybe not.

Hmm..... what else.... I'm sure there's more.

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Stop, littlek.... I don't think I can handle any more.

You poor thing.

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when I was 3 1/2 I very specifically asked my mother to make me some jello with fresh pineapple, she tried her very best but I'm sure you all know out it turned out.

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I have nothing to contribute, after all I grew up in another
country - therefore, no emotional scars!

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Surely there was something, Jane?

How about the time you were groped by the Pope?

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It was the time I learned I was afraid of clowns. I was about 4 and my parents took my brother and I to the circus. We were sitting in the front of the bleachers waiting for the show to start when suddenly this creature with a white face, a big red nose and a blue afro was standing next to me holding out a lollipop. My mother had warned me about strangers with candy and this was the strangest stranger I had ever seen. I screamed and tried to pull back from him. I suddenly found I had leaned back into another kid's cotton candy and it was stuck in my hair. I screamed louder, my mother was trying to calm me down by saying something like "it's just a clown" - that meant nothing to me- I was beyond comfort. My mother and I spent the rest of the show in the ladies room trying to salvage my hair that was stuck together like Rasta twists. I have avoided the circus ever since.

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I believe pope groping is classified as a religious experience but I suppose it would make a difference whether you groped the pope or the pope groped you. I once groped a deaconess, nearly froze my fingers to the bone.

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GW wrote:

We were sitting in the front of the bleachers waiting for the show to start when suddenly this creature with a white face, a big red nose and a blue afro was standing next to me holding out a lollipop

That is friggin hilarious.

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Dys wrote:

I once groped a deaconess, nearly froze my fingers to the bone.

I had the same experience, but since I wouldn't consider that trauma, but rather a simple learning experience, I believe it doesn't have a place on this thread. Sorry, dys.

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I was three years old (how come so many of our traumas here happened when we were three?)

A little boy in my neighborhood, who was five or six, was showing off for me by climbing a tree. He managed to make it up onto a pretty high branch. I was impressed!

Then, suddenly, he lost his footing and came crashing down to the ground right in front of my horrified three year old eyes!

I ran to my mom and told her what happened. She got his mom, who took him to the hospital. Turns out, he was alright -- except for a broken leg. But that healed up eventually.

Let's just say, I've always had a devastating effect on men. Razz

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Okay, okay, before you say something evil of my ever so perfect childhood, I will come up with something.

On weekend drives with the family, I always got terribly
sick, and by the time I found out it was my fathers irrate driving skills that made me ill, I was already hooked on Dramamine.

So there you have it!

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Jane, the more I read your stories, the more I believe you should be locked up.

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I am, dear gustav, I am.

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I wonder what would have happened with Stray Cat and that little boy if he hadn't fallen out of the tree?

Would she have beens so impressed that she would have raced into his arms once he was safely back on the ground after his brilliant, girl-impressing, tree climbing adventure.

Would they have gone on to be husband and wife?

Would there be stories told to their grandchildren about that fateful day?

But all these questions are pointless because the stupid kid fell out of the tree and Stray Cat now goes through life thinking she is a cat.

The horror of it all.

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(sob) it gets worse....I've never been able to find another guy who would climb a tree for me since then!! Crying or Very sad

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Foxes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

aaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!1

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I believe I can find someone to climb a tree for you, Stray Cat. I have a friend, Rod Gerhardson, who is an excellent tree climber and also has a fairly decent job as a night custodian at the local Baptist church.

If you're not too busy this Saturday afternoon perhaps I could arrange a rendezvous.

Would you be up for that?

Most emotionally-scarring childhood experience?

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