**LJ Idol Season 4 Week 2 Entry: What Terrifies Me**

When first I read the topic for this week’s LJ-Idol, I groaned.  Upon reading some of the entries, I wondered if a post claiming what terrifies me is all the other entries might fly.  The posts flooding in give terror a whole new name.  Having just got off the phone with SirCaliban, our terror might actually be the prospect of taking a “bye” this week.

Having just told SirCaliban to phone it in if needs be, I am back to the wonderful world of contemplating that which terrifies me.  Haunting my thoughts and dreams this week, I still do not have a good answer.  Where do I go?  I live in the greater DC area, thoughts of terrorism or nuclear attack simply get swept under the rug.  We know it is out there, we know it can happen, we know it might likely happen.  Best not to think about it, realizing that if the fates deem our time is up, so be it.

I could appease the nagging guilt in my head for being too busy to post about pediatric cancer in September.  Throw out there the obligatory cancer card.  I wouldn’t call that terrifying, though.  Worrisome and stressful, sure.  I loathe that disease.  Could loathing count?  What about my fear of my own strong emotions?

Instead, I believe I will delve once more into my childhood.  Last week’s entry sort of counts towards this topic.  So why not write up another entry that covers both?  Perhaps I can get some extra credit points?  Goodness knows, I could use all the help I can get!

Once more into my parental units goal to completely and utterly terrorize me.  Dead Man Jones was not enough for those two!  Isn’t there a saying about no rest for the weary?  Or perhaps it is for the wicked?  Either case could probably work when speaking of me.  I still have insomnia, and I wonder if the terror of my childhood has anything to do with it.

I don’t recall just how old I was when my parents first showed me this movie.  I only remember the fear that grasped at my young heart.  How was I to know that my parents pick for Movie Night would seem so utterly realistic?

It started so innocently.  Gathered around the TV with a bowl of fresh jiffy pop, we set in for the night.  As the movie began, I should have known I was doomed when the BBC logo filled the screen.  Oh this isn’t the BBC of today.  This was the BBC I knew and loved as a child.  Hokey effects, low budget, rubber monsters, and film quality that made my grandpa’s video camera look professional.

I don’t know just what it was.  The good acting of the Brits, the film that made it look like a home movie lending to the realism, or the story itself.  Any combination of the three perhaps?  All I know is by the time the movie ended, I quaked with fear, clutching my teddy bear for dear life.

It was years before I could stare at the night sky without fearing a shooting star that would bring blindness upon me.  For a girl that loved astronomy, you can imagine that double edged sword.  When others would excitedly talk about meteor showers, I would want to hide under my bed.  Every August the Perseid’s made me fear for my own life.

Just what was this horrible movie?  Just what could terrorize me so much that now as a grown woman I sometimes stop to think twice?

Yes, the Triffids.  A movie at least twenty years old terrified my child self.  The Day of the Triffids begins when a meteor shower blinds virtually everyone on the planet.  Rising to the top of the food chain, the mighty Triffid plants pull up their roots and hunt out their human prey.  The only warning unsuspecting crippled humans got was the knocking sound from the base of the plant as it walked on its root feet.

Even worse, the knocking sound came from my window virtually every night.  This bush outside my window would grow this one wild branch that reached up and tapped on my window in the wind.  No matter how many times my father trimmed it, that branch reached up.  Casting bizarre triffid-like shadows in my room and knocking on my window in an attempt to find me.  I just knew it wanted to gobble me up.

Even worse, I still can’t eat celery, which is what my child-mind related the plants to.

A bad post-apocolyptic movie from the 1960’s terrorized me in the 1980’s.  Affecting me in ways that I am still discovering.

You don’t want to know what Attack of the Killer Tomatoes did to me.  I can barely touch a tomato today.

Am I twisted from insane terror from my childhood?  Yes.  Did I learn my lesson?  Not at all, I still tune in to the new terrifying envisionments from the BBC.  Hide behind the sofa, it’s Doctor Who time!

Somewhere, I know Freud is rubbing his hands with glee, happy at the torment on my psyche caused by my parents.

–Lady O