Or, as I like to call them, Rape Fables

When I was a little girl my family was always sending me downstairs at my grandparents’ house to fetch stuff, which seemed kind of cruel on account of I was the only person in the whole house who was scared of the basement. But I’d trudge down there anyway, with my grandma’s dog Toby in tow. He’d stay right beside me the whole time because I think he was afraid of being swallowed up by the water heater too.

Yesterday at our end of summer cookout, my grandpa asked me to go to the basement to get something, but when he looked at my face, he chuckled and said, “I’ll come with you.” On the way back upstairs, he said, “You’re not still afraid of the dark, are you, kid?” And I was like, “Psh. No. I was never afraid of the dark.”

But I was. And guess what else? I still am. In fact, I am more scared of more things than anyone I have ever met in my life.

I don’t like scary movies or scary TV shows or scary commercials. (Or blood and guts in any of those things either.) And by “scary” I mean, like, you know those commercials for home alarm systems where someone busts up into the house, but the family is saved in the nick of time by the panic button? That’s too scary for me.

But it does remind me of one of my favorite Sarah Haskins Target Women videos.