Things don’t frighten children like they used to
It began with the Scottish writer John Niven musing on Twitter: “Things you feared deeply in childhood that turned out not to be much of an issue in adult life: quicksand.”
The thread rapidly took off, with scores of people recalling the things they had been made to feel (irrationally) scared about when they were little. Himself and I had a lot of fun locating our own youthful phobias and adding them to Niven’s list. Why were we convinced that chewing gum, if swallowed, would wrap itself around our internal organs?
We firmly believed that all dogs abroad had rabies and you would die a horrible, thirsty death while foaming at the mouth if you so much as touched one. (Luckily, I didn’t leave the UK for the first time till I was 16. None the less, the fear was a strong one and persists to this day.)
Certain anxieties arose as old wives’ tales bumped into inventions like central heating and television. Do you really get chilblains from warming your cold self on a radiator? I didn’t know what a chilblain was (still unsure), but they were an ever-present threat.
If you were a girl, the seat of a public lavatory held a special terror. My mother taught me to squat a few inches above the pan to avoid “germs”, using what we didn’t know back then were “core strength” and “glutes”. There are plenty of ladies of mature years who are a whizz at squats because they’ve spent half a century keeping their posterior clear of dangerous toilets. And the Bermuda Triangle? What was that all about?
Adders. A swan breaking your arm. Being mauled by an Alsatian. Any one of them could catch you unawares if you dropped your guard. “My mum was always warning us against Alsatians,” one woman told Niven, “They turn, you know.” (Alsatians were definitely the dangerous dog of the Seventies.) The editor of this page swears she still can’t see bracken without stomping on it because her dad told her it was where adders lurked.
What else? Getting a frisbee caught in overhead power lines and frying to death. Pylons in general and anything to do with electrical substations. Swimming after eating. Weirs. Picking dandelions and wetting the bed. Unplugging the bath while sitting in it. Sucking on your fountain pen (ink poisoning). Chewing a pencil
(lead poisoning). Being trapped upside down in a sinking ship (thank you, The Poseidon Adventure). Eating cheese before bedtime. Quarries. Stepping on cracks between paving stones. Fireworks (especially Catherine wheels, which would fly off and take your eye out). Getting your foot caught in an escalator. Spontaneous human combustion.
Himself, it turns out, was deeply troubled by the possibility of spontaneous human combustion. I was more bothered by the idea of a tree growing in your stomach if you swallowed an apple pip. What if the branches poked out of your ears? Sitting too close to the television gave you square eyes (perfectly true in my myopic case), although I’m not sure my grandmother’s warning that the “rays” would damage my kidneys had much basis in science.
Oh, and leaving the overhead light on in the car at night. I’m still scared of doing that. Why? Because it’s dangerous, silly! (Is it, is it?)
We can laugh at our childhood fears looking back, but what lay behind that litany of disasters foretold that could happen at any point during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies? I blame the war, like a comet’s tail leaving a trail of dread.
The older generation, children themselves when Death stalked the world, guarded their young jealously against it. Funny thing is, I’ve never been bitten by an adder or Alsatian. Still, there’s no room for complacency. Mind how you go, please.