Confessions of a sissy child.

Beloved readers: Some of you know me in person; many of you know me only by my ubiquitous pseudonym. Small in stature, I'm the toughest motherfucking girl you know. But right now? I'm about to deconstruct all perceptions of what you think of me.

In some aspects I was fearless child; performing daredevil stunts on my bike, picking fights with bigger kids, catching and keeping as pets various reptiles and amphibians, and climbing to the highest branches of the tallest trees. I even punched my kindergarten teacher. In the face.

But I was terrified of any kind of imagery depicting horror or the paranormal. Now don't you worry, I outgrew this mild form of retardation by my early teens and subsequently inhaled the entire works of Stephen King by the time I was 17. But for now, here for your amusement are some random things that tormented a young litelysalted.

Ghostbusters: Compared to some of the other things you'll find on this list, Ghostbusters was pretty damn scary. Except that I was also afraid of the music video for the Ghostbusters theme song, because it showed scenes from the movie, including that skeleton driving the cab. Don't even get me started on the Fat Boys' Are You Ready For Freddy.

The horror section at the local video store: When I was growing up the video store in our town was a combination mattress and video store. I shit you not. But that's besides the point. To get to the children's section where I would invariably rent The Last Unicorn or a compliation of Disney shorts, I had to walk past the horror movie section. I was so scared of all those horrible boxes with grinning skulls and titles in dripping blood lettering I would have my mom cover my eyes as we walked past.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure: I had a love/hate relationship with this movie. I loved Pee Wee, but I hated the part where Large Marge's face wigged out. We had this movie on VHS and I actually made my mom record over that part of the tape so whenever I'd play the movie it went to like, a commercial for Oreo Cookies at that part. (My poor mother must have been so ashamed of her retarded wussy child.)

Ghost Stories: We all remember those great Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books, right? Well, obviously I avoided those. Except for this one time, which will be forever known as The Crown Jewel Of Childhood Humiliation. Third Grade. Halloween. As a special treat, one of the class mothers' came in to read stories from this book. I won't get into details, but I will say the incident ended with me crying, sitting in the hallway, and holding my teacher's hand.

Amazing Stories: For the most part, I loved this show. It was a poor man's Twilight Zone created by Stephen Spielberg, and most of the stories were fantasy based, feel goodey schmoop. But there was this one episode in particular, Mirror, Mirror, which featured a horror writer who would see a phantom trying to kill him everytime he looked in a mirror. This scared the bejeezus out of me to the point where it was literally a good 5 years before I felt that I could safely look into a mirror.

Recently I rented this show on DVD, and actually felt quite nervous playing this episode which had haunted me for the better part of my childhood. I started watching it, creeped out as I anticipated the phantom, which of course turned out to be embarrassingly stupid and not the slightest bit scary. (And played by Tim Robbins, I soon after found out.)

Honorable Mention: I won't go so far as to say this tormented or terrified me, but for some reason I really did not care for the intro scene from You Can't Do That On Television. Something about the way the guy's face cracked and fell apart inexplicably rubbed me the wrong way. So much, in fact, that I used to change the channel or leave the room when it came on.