Pop Culture League Challenge: Are You Scared?

     A Chilling and Horrifying question from

     What scares me? the traditional standbys, from the classic universal monsters to the modern slasher give me a moments pause and nothing more. The only one that disturbed me for more than a moment was Freddy, because he can get into your dreams. Jason, Michael, etc. are just abnormally strong whack-jobs with masks, and they are neither sword nor arrow proof. The original Alien shocked me badly, but mostly the face-hugger scene. It just came RIGHT OUTTA THERE, so that was more camera work than the inherently scary nature of the face-hugger. The chest-burster was just gross and alarmingly fast after that.

     There are things that unnerve me-faces or creatures whose intent you can't read- stray dogs, unexpected clowns (yep, clowns) for example, but they don't terrify, me, they make me justly wary. A creepy clown with a stray dog has a good shot of making me cross the street and go around. But that is millions of years of human survival instinct functioning as designed. If something feels unsafe to us, there is probably a reason that it is.

     These are the things that terrify me, that paralyze me during the day and wake me from a sound sleep at night. The creeping fear that the cough I have is going to go from asthma to worse. The fear that my "Diabeetus" is going to start advancing and incapacitate me. The fear that people are going to abandon me. The fear that some illness I don't know I have is going to snuff my spark in the middle of the night. The fear that my birds and family are going to be left without my care, and the worry of who will care for them. Neil Gaiman said "Every hour wounds, the last one kills." and the Reaper is slow but certain to everyone. Nobody avoids him.

     And then there is the paper. Bills. Medical bills. Medical bills from doctors I have seen, and bills from doctors I have yet to see. the bills that are slowly collapsing into a black hole on my desk, pulling me toward their event horizon and my eventual doom.

     So my fears are... Adulting. Aspects of it at least. This is why I have the plastic bubble. Looks like I bypassed the funny on this one.

Welcome to Adulthood. Sleep with the lights on.

And this made me think of a Song by Jethro Tull

Here are my cohorts and their boogie-men

• Green Plastic Squirt Gun has some very reasonable ones
• as does Collectors Universe
• Toy Break makes like Alice Cooper and welcomes us to his nightmare
• Cassie's Library fears what people do to other people and the Donald with his tiny fingers on the button
• D.I. Treasures brought us a childhood tale
• The Toy Box brought us the ruler of his fears with the King of Pop
• 20 Years Before 2000 has some very 80's fears of monsters and aliens
• G.I. Jigsaw doesn't really fear the snake-women, but has a problem with spiders
• Rebel with Causes fears heights and depths
• Haxbee covers fear for fun

And you can always access any others from the pop culture league logo above