What is the scariest thing.....

Probably burning my hand.

I was about 3-4.  Mom had left me in the kitchen finger-painting on the table and she was on the phone (just next room, barely out of sight but OUT of sight).  I was 'done' and as I'd set there I saw my Dad's Lucky's and pack of matches sitting on the counter next to me. 

I used to get these thots as a kid "Wow -- DAD can make that light with fire .. but a **kid** couldn't do that.  *I* couldn't do that .... COULD I??"

So I picked up the matches with my paint-y hands took one off (and apparently carefully 'closed cover before striking' because I'd see Pa do that) and swiped it across the rought stuff on the pack of matches and

POOF -- it **LIT**.  Much to my complete and utter suprise!  But rapidly I got scared.  I was little, but old enough to know "kids can burn down houses" so I was **terrified** to let it go (not knowing it probably would have gone out as it fluttered to the floor). 

Nope -- I sat there and HELD it -- and began to scream as my entire hand (compliments of the paint) ignited.

Mom came running and yanked my hand under the faucet but I'd burned that hand to 2-3 degree burns so she wrapped me in a towel and got someone to drive me to the doctor. 

To this day that left thumbnail is almost as thick as a toenail courtesy of that burned tissue. 

I got a stern talking to about "letting adult things BE for adults" and "NEVER playing with fire!"

And my Dad re-defined what was "up out of the kid's way!"

 My friend and I decided to ride our bikes across town to my grandma's house.  We still had training wheels so we couldn't have been more than 4.  My grandma lived, oh, I'd say about 3 miles away and I had driven there with my parents enough times that I knew the way.  So off we went.  Well, we got there and she wasn't home, surprise surprise, she was a bingo freak.  So we drank out of the hose and started back. 

I'm not sure how long we were gone, but EVERYONE was looking for us.  My friend's sister found us as we crossed the park and made us hurry our butts home.  I fell off my bike on the way down the hill out of the park and so when I got home, not only was my mom steaming mad, she was freaked out about all the blood on my hands and face. 

She was moving things off the vanity in the bathroom to get me cleaned up, all the while ranting away, and she swung around with a black pin brush and whacked me in the mouth.  Totally by accident, but now I had a split lip too. 

Needless to say, I never went to my Nan's again without permission.

Let me preface this with, "Glenda, don't read!" 

It wasn't as scary for my mom as it was for me, but...

When I was 5ish, there was an empty lot across from our house. We used to play softball there, but one day, my friend and I were walking onto the lot just to sit around. Well, like the little rednecks that we were, we were barefoot, and I stepped on something cold. When I looked down, I saw a black snake and started screaming hysterically...not pretend hysterical...real hysterical. My mom had no idea why I was screaming, but she came running over. I just kept screaming, and she literally slapped the crap out of me, just like you'd see in a movie. I stopped dry. So it was far scarier for me than her, but she was at least concerned for a little while lol.  

 I didn't do anything to scare my Mom...

But my son stuck some tweezers in an electrical outlet.  It was our anniversary, and Hub and I were waiting on the sitter, when the lights flickered.  Ummm.. two people never moved so fast.  He was fine, though.

I had asthma as a child. Severe enough that my doctor at the time diagnosed me with an enlarged heart and scar tissue on my lungs. He forecasted that I would not survive puberty, which brings an incredible strain on a healthy body. He seriously, without malice, counseled her in trying to afford pre-need burial programs. When puberty hit, I did have a couple of episodes that did, in fact, nearly do me in, ambulance rides, me not breathing. But, I'm as stubborn as my mom is and I wasn't ready, yet. And here I am, living on borrowed time.

I did have asthma through my teen years, which excluded me from military service. 4-F medical disqualification, they called it.

When I was 3, I stuck a bobby pin in an electrical outlet. But that was minor. You would have thought, though, that I would have learned not to play with electricity. Anyone appreciate the irony as I do?

I don't recall scaring my mother, but my siblings did.

• When my youngest sister was two, she was playing with a toy "bug" with a suction cup on the body and four metal legs.  You were supposed to push down on the suction cup against a flat surface and wait for it to pop off, but she decided to stick two of the legs in an electrical socket.  Luckily she grabbed two legs that were one continuous piece of metal; otherwise, the current would have gone across her chest instead of just burning her hands.  OUCH!
• The other sister was gone from her bed when my mom got up one morning.  She didn't answer when Mom called.  After a bit of looking, my sister was found sound asleep  on the floor in the kitchen behind the kitchen table and under the air conditioner.  The conclusion was that she must have sleepwalked, but it shook my mother up. 
• One of my brothers was given permission to catch a "snake" that he had seen.  My mother was sure that he had just seen a lizard, but he had identified the snake in his snake book.

My brother managed to catch the snake by the tail as it was going into the ground and yelled for my frantic mom to get him a jar.  She realized it really was a snake and yelled for him to let it go.   He responded, "No, no, it will get away!"

Mother quickly got him a jar and the snake was subsequently verified to be a small, harmless, blind worm snake.

• When this same brother was about two, he was running through the kitchen, tripped, and fell against the stove.  The handle was chipped and no one had realized that there was a sharp edge.  My brother's cheek was ripped open and they had to rush him to the ER to have him stitched up.  He fell asleep on the operating table after the local pain killer - past his bedtime.

To this day he has a scar on his cheek which my parents had offered to have removed.  He declined and we think it is because it looks like a dueling scar.   

My father scared me to death once.    He was showing me how steam could turn a wheel.  He used a coffee can (one of the old flat kind), poked a hole in the top, put water in it, and put it on the stove.  Unfortunately the pressure in the can got too high and it exploded.

My dad was burned on the face (couldn't shave for a week).  I was a fast little 9-year-old and was at the side of the stove a couple of feet away.  I turned with my arm raised and was burned on the back of my shoulder rather than on the face.

Dropped a chem major in college because I was just too nervous about things exploding. 

This was actually something my father did.  When I was a kid we had a gas wall heater.  One day it wasn't working and my father decided to check into fixing it himself. Instead of getting a flashlight he lit a match.  It wound up blowing him across the hall into the kitchen, singeing off his eyelashes and eyebrows. It scared the bejeebers out of all of us, especially after it was all over and we realized  the entire house could have blown up.

Joyce

fuzzy_dogs_mom

This was actually something my father did.  When I was a kid we had a gas wall heater.  One day it wasn't working and my father decided to check into fixing it himself. Instead of getting a flashlight he lit a match.  It wound up blowing him across the hall into the kitchen, singeing off his eyelashes and eyebrows. It scared the bejeebers out of all of us, especially after it was all over and we realized  the entire house could have blown up.

Joyce

My friend, cousin and I got into a car accident when I was a teenager.  My parents got called by the police to come to the emergency room.  I was hurt but it wasn't life threatening.  But, they didn't know that right away.   I think that probably was the scariest. 

huskymom

 Lord please forgive me, but is your dad by chance Homer Simpson?  Honestly, I pictured this in cartoon... Did his eyebrows grow back?  Doh!

Yes they did and he never, ever again lit a match to see why a gas appliance wasn't working.

Joyce

Well... other than my apparent propensity to play in the road as a young child... I would have to say when the cops called my parents at 1 am.

I'd gone train watching with some friends of mine and (was assured) that it would be fine. When I missed a call about an hour later from my parents, I realized something wasn't right. Called them back to discover that 911 had called my parents to report my "abandoned" car. My dad was already up and in his car on the way here when I called him back. So... um... two lessons learned that night. 1) Don't park on rail property, and 2) take one car for train watching.

Topics like this make me realize how much misery I dealt my parents.

When I was 14, some friends & I decided to go toliet paper my then boyfirend's house.  Apparently, we were a little too loud, because his father came outside & saw us.  We took off running, but his dad returned very quickly & fired shots off at us.  He was a pretty good shot, because I was peppered with rat shot.  I remember being hit, & I remember that we kept running, but things become fuzzy after that.  I tripped over a root, hit my head & was knocked unconscious.  My firends thought that I was dead.  One of them ran to a nearby house, & called my parents, told them that I had been shot.  By the time my parents arrived, obviously very shaken, I was conscious.  I ended up with concussion, & pellets in the back of my neck, back, butt, & the backside of my legs. 

Strangely, I think that my parents were so thankful that I was alive that they weren't really upset with me.  They still make fun of me for being shot.

 I thought of one more.  It was much later on in life.  I was 21 and pregnant with Kale.  His father and I had broken up before I found out I was pregnant.  I was soooo scared to tell my parents.  I finally told my mom.  She was ok with it, but told me it was up to me to tell my dad.  Well, I tried.  I kept going into the garage to talk to him.  But everyday I chickened out.  Finally one night in the living room I blurted it out.  My dad just put his head down and shook it slowly.  I thought for sure I had broken his heart.  It just about killed me.  Finally he looked up at me and he had tears in his eyes.  I'll never forget what he said to me.

"Candy," he said,"I knew you've been trying to tell me something.  I knew you were having a hard time.  But I thought you were going to tell me you were dying."  Kale is probably my dad's favorite person aside from my mom.  But I had no idea what I put my dad through that week.   Even now just thinking about it makes me cry.

I'm not sure about when I was little.

In high school, I got these sore lumps behind each ear.  I had them for a week before I told my mom.  She is NOT one to freak out about health, but my aunt had breast cancer very young, my dad had a large tumor removed from behind his ear, and a girl at my school had some cancer in her head so my mom was deep down worried I had Hodgkin's or something like that.  Turned out to be some weird infection.

Another time I scared her was when I was in Africa and first got very sick.  We were at an Internet cafe and in an e-mail I mentioned how sick I was.  Then she didn't hear from me for several days.  The next time I was at the Internet cafe I had several concerned e-mails, each with an escalating amount of ??? and !!!, lol.