Most emotionally-scarring childhood experience?

OK, this one is like something from News of the Weird...

It was scarring just listening to this story.

My older sister told me that when she was a kid she found a lizard running around the house. She didn't want to see it get hurt, so she drowned it in a fish tank.

That's it. That's the story. Damned if I know. I'm 5 years old listening to this ****, wondering why she was so loopy.....and they told me I was the crazy one.

mutter mutter mutter....

Let me think about that one, Chai.

I seem to remember her beating a bat to death with a broom, so it wouldn't get in her hair.

I'm seriously not kidding.

She definately tossed that kitten out of the 2nd story window into the shrubbery below.

It was getting more attention than she was at her 21st birthday party.

Does she pull the wings off of insects and hold baby ducks under water? I wouldn't let her near any infants if I was you.

I once watched as my 10 year old brother attempted to find out how many marischino cherries he could fit into a 1 year old's mouth.

Oh, she was my parents favorite...she was very stable and dependable, and never gave them a moments trouble.

Want more?

She always told me our dog was skinny because I ate his Kennel Ration and drank gutter water.

One Christmas, those where the 2 things she gave me. That was OK...She didn't duck fast enough.

My brothers posted a sign on the telephone pole outside our house, too high for me to reach that said....

CHAI TEA FOR SALE
50 CENTS!!!!

after a while, they saw the product wasn't moving, so they started reducing the price.

not me, but my little brothers...

told my brother to put out his arm, while I pretended I was a nurse he trustingly did and I stabbed him with Mums 'quick un-pick'
(shiny little sharp metal thing that undoes sewing machine stitches)

dressed my youngest brother in my dolly's clothes then dragged him too the shop and told everyone he was my little sister!

must have been traumatic for them as today, they both remember these incidences like it was yesterday!

One time when I was little I asked the teacher if I could go to the batroom. It was just me and a retarded kid peeing in the bathroom. Then he turned to me and asked me a question. I tried to understand him but I couldn't (little amigo was a very sweet little boy). He got angry and started yelling at me. I tried to tell him I could not understand. Then all of a sudden he started choking me. That crazy bastard tried to kill little amigo.

I ran down the hall crying, Went into class and sat down. I almost got murdered by a handicapped kid taking a piss.

wow, that's a good one amigo...

retarded kids can be damn near as scary as clowns.

retarded midget clowns.......... my worst nightmare

they're standing outside your bedroom window right now....waiting for you to go to sleep.

Oh my, Gus. I had one of those real fox stoles when I was a child. Snow white, it was. There was a clip under the jaw so you could fasten it to the tail so it wouldn't fall off. Softest fur I've ever felt. I felt so glamorous, I never wanted to take it off.

It never occurred to me that such a thing might traumatize poor young children like yourself. But now that I know....let me look around. I bet I saved it in one of those boxes in the guest room closet.

I will send it to you...to aid in your recovery. Just take it out of the box for 1 minute the first day, 2 minutes the second...work your way up. By the time you get to 30 minutes, you'll be so busy doing other things you'll forget it's even there. Then you shall be free.

The most horrifying event of my childhood occurred when I was about six. We lived in a tiny house in Calwa, California. The structure of our home was about the size of a single car garage, perhaps a bit smaller. We were a family of six in there, with a wood stove for heat and cooking and a tiny bathroom, with a commode in it and a galvanized tub. Oh, and an ice box. The rest of the room was taken by a full size bed and some pallets for the kids. Outside was a shed and at one end of it, a roof over a washing machine.

On wash days, my stepfather built fires under galvanized tubs and heated water for the laundry. The clothes lines (for hanging wet wash) covered a quarter of the whole property.

One saturday, the fires were high, the heat intense, the water about boiling. My brother and I chased each other around one such tub. We stopped our game a moment, I looked away briefly, and as I looked back at my brother, he was losing his balance and falling backward into the tub. I saw water splash over the rim, then his arms and legs threashing briefly. After a minute, he quit struggling.

I was very disappointed that we had no butter to put on the cornbread that evening.

My Nana used to wake me up in the morning by putting cigarettes out on my forehead and yelling "take the trash out, ya' little bitch!" with whiskey breath. Then she would humiliate me in front of the family by kicking my ass at arm wrestling.

Finally, I stood up for myself and said, "Nana, that's enough." And sure enough, since I said that last month, she's left me alone.

I was madly passionate about my high school English teacher--we called her "Legs"--but she was having an affair with another teacher. How come teachers only began in recent years to make it with their students? That's traumatic!

Corn bread without butter? That tops any horror I've experienced. I'll stop whining.

when i was 4, they were installing the first telephone lines in the small rural town i was living and i picked up a telephone wire and got the shock of my life.

i have been wired ever since.

I'm glad you've started this thread, Gus. It gives us all the opportunity to vent. And as you'd know, venting is very, very healthy ... it expunges the demons & all that ....

My most horrifying childhood memories were brought on by religion. Specifically from being exposed to the Catholic church at a tender age & also the religious instruction lessons, catechism, and all that ...

Anyway, this taught me that just about everything was a SIN! That there was this kind of powerful person who saw everything you did, knew every thought you thought .... It was awful, Gus! Absolutely no privacy. I was constantly tied up in knots trying to be GOOD! But I kept being bad, never-the-less, & had to go to confession a lot. It was awful, I tell you! All this trying to be good actually gave me nightmares, on quite a few occasions. Really.

Geez, edgar, what can any of us say after that? Sorry it happened....