Monday, July 24, 2006

Strange Childhood Fears

Today I cut open my finger with a pair of scissors, accidentally. I was peering into my finger in the morbid way one has of wanting to see how deep it is and what the hell all is going on in there when I remembered this from my childhood:

When I was little, I heard somewhere that we have 7 layers of skin. This made sense to me, as sometimes you could scrape yourself but it wouldn't bleed. But I thought that we had 7 layers of skin total, as in, we only got 7 layers for our whole life. If you fell down and scraped your knee, well then, too bad for you, there would just be a hole in your knee forever.

My dad, for some reason, when he was little, thought that if you got a cut in the web of skin between your thumb and your first finger, you would die.

My mom thought that if a dog bit you, you would automatically get rabies. Once her childhood dog bit her and she just lay down on her bed and waited to die.

I wonder if all kids think of death in this way, as if it's always around the corner, brought on by papercuts and skinned knees and nips by family pets.

Or if it's just my crazy ass family.

1 comment:

Kim said...

Between the BK mask and the image of her lying down to die of rabies, your mom is quickly becoming the most hilarious person I know!