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40 and Over Club

Here's a dumb one. I lived in San Diego when I was 10 and 11. For some reason, some psychics or whatever did the first (of many!) "California will be hit by the Big One and drop into the sea." They even made a song about it and I remember some of the lyrics.

The date was supposed to be on a Friday in April. Either 1968 or 1969, I'm not sure which. Man, that month sucked for me as a kid. What did I know? It didn't help that a neighbor friend, a 20-year-old girl, was spooked enough by the prediction to get in her orange WV and go back home to Philadelphia.

To this day, I still don't like psychics. Thanks a lot!
 
When I was eight years old, I watched the 1958 Richard Cunha horror cheapie Frankenstein’s Daughter on TV. The first appearance of the titular monster freaked me out.

45Frankensteins_Daughter.jpg


As I’ve mentioned before, as a child I had an inordinate fear of plumbing, especially large-diameter pipes. I assumed they were sewer lines and they might burst and dump yucky stuff all over me.
 
I spent my early childhood in the late 70's and spent a lot of my late youth in the 80's and early 90's... That's all I will say...and thank god I'm not 40 yet. I dread the day when I turn 40, but you know what about 2 years ago a girl that I work with, that had just graduated from a high school, mistaken me for a minor. And I was, like, one of the oldest guy there! :guffaw:
 
When I was a young kid back in the 60s, I think my biggest fear was that the house would burn down; I had nightmares about that all the time. Other than that, random things would spook me. I remember having nightmares about the Captain America comic where they fish his bullet-riddled mask out of the bay. Several episodes of the TV show The Avengers gave me the creeps. And Old Yeller scared the hell out of me.

I thought about nuclear war in those days. I remember things like coming down Dorchester Ave in a car and imagining nuclear explosions along the horizon toward Boston, but I don't remember being especially anxious that it would actually happen.
 
Adventure Comics #340 and #341 told a two-part story, reprinted in 1973 as Legion of Super-Heroes #3 and #4, the reprints of which I bought off the shelf. In the first of these, Computo kills one of Triplicate Girl's copies, and after this she is known as Duo Damsel. (Violently killing heroes was very rare in DC comics.) I had a vivid nightmare about being chased by Computo that I still remember today.
 
The opening theme from Ironside. I would always run whenever I heard that song and I didn't want to see that wheelchair.
 
Remember those rather graphic safety movies in the mid-70s about the dangers of playing near railway lines? Those freaked me out to such an extent that trains featured heavily in my dreams and nightmares, though it was always someone I didn't know being run over. Oddly I love travelling by train nowadays.
 
The Robot, a.k.a. Mr. X, in The Six Million Dollar Man: Day of the Robot.

Wow, that one really got to me, too, in fact I posted about it before:
http://trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3457867&postcount=45

The opening theme from Ironside. I would always run whenever I heard that song and I didn't want to see that wheelchair.

Yeah, that was really an intense opening, I remember it well.

I don't know if it was a local thing or not, but when I was a kid in the early '70s there was a lot of talk about kidnappers. I was always worried about cars driving slowly and stuff like that when I was walking around.


Justin
 
I grew up all of my early life (1960s) on Air Force Bases and for whatever reason never had any fear of nuclear war... not even the slightest fear (and I was completely aware of the issue).

After my parents divorce, I had a much more immediate fear - that I was going to starve to death. I left a very poor home for the Navy, sent my paychecks to mom and my sister, while the military made sure I was fed four squares a day; a very sweet arrangement ;) Now in my 50's, I find incredible solace with cooking. In the past year, particularly, I've spent an great deal of time in the kitchen.. I have a ton of cookbooks and have registered on allrecipe, with some 50 recipes under my belt. MY children, who gobble up my dinners regularly, will never know that level of hunger as long as I'm alive. Fear has turned to fortune in my home ;)
 
I thought about nuclear war in those days. I remember things like coming down Dorchester Ave in a car and imagining nuclear explosions along the horizon toward Boston, but I don't remember being especially anxious that it would actually happen.

I lived in D.C. from 1980-81. Never worried about it then, because I knew if we got hit, it would be over quickly.

I think that it's scarier to think about *surviving* a nuke attack rather than being obliterated in one.
 
The Omen movies, the Salem's Lot mini with David Soul and, er, HR Pufnstuf scared the tar out of me when I was younger. Also, Carry On Screaming.
 
I thought of another item this morning... Anyone else remember the "Tylenol Cyanide" murders?

(I think it was Tylenol, but could be mistaken.)

Cheers,
-CM-
 
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