at home

I used to believe that if I held the flush button on the toilet down for long enough, it would be endlessly flushing and would forever drain the water supply. I would lie awake dreading this.

My mother used to have a walk-in closet, and I couldn't understand the concept of it as I didn't have any closet myself. She didn't like anyone touching her stuff and forbid me to go in there. I was only allowed to if she was already inside. So I was convinced that the closet was a magical portal. On the rare occasions she wasn't around, I would sneak in and absorb the mystical aura. If I opened the door, I would be transported to a magical world or a different dimension.

When I was about five, I asked my mother why a vanity table was called that. She told me it was because girls who looked in the mirror too frequently became vain. For a few years I ran my parents' bedroom in fear that I would catch a glimpse of myself in the vanity mirror!

When we were about 6 my friends and I discovered a storm drain under my back porch. We were thoroughly convinced it led to China and dug at it with forks until my parents caught us.

We moved when I was eight. In the basement of our new house there was a storage room, and inside that room was the boiler room. For no reason that I can think of, I was always terrified that there was a dead man hanging in the boiler room. To this day I don't like to go in there and turn on the light as fast as I can.

For years I was terrified of mirrors. I was a big alice in wonderland fan, even though it scared me! I thought that if you slept with the miror facing you, you´d be sucked into Alice´s world but she was a "bad Alice" So I had to turn all the mirrors around and cover the back of them too so nobody could escape from the other side.

When I was 9 years old, I asked for an amethyst necklace for Christmas. (I still believed in Santa) My older sister got jealous so she told me that gold was colored the way it was because people peed on silver. I never wore the necklace again and still have an aversion to yellow gold.

When I was a kid, I thought that anyone who was still in the bathroom when the toilet tank stopped filling would be electrocuted by the toilet. I have no explanation for this.

I used to believe…

That blankets had some magic quality that made it so you could become warm and stay that way

When I was a child I used to believe that, if I jumped off a high enough ledge, a paper bag could act like a parachute. Countless times i would jump off the couch in my old house and try to make the plastic bag catch the wind. I was too afraid to jump off the stairs but i truly believed it would work. I know now that a paper bag couldn't possible support the weight of a human being much less an adult.

When I was little, whenever I put a video in the VCR, I pulled my hand back really fast because I thought my fingers would get sucked in the VCR along with the video.

I used to believe that if I opened the dishwasher while it was running, a tsunami of hot water and suds would come flooding out of it and I'd get washed away.

It wasn't until I was 24 that I finally opened it mid way through a cycle and the water just stops and not a drop escapes. What a let down that was!

When I was about 4 or 5, I asked my mom what happened to the bath water once it went down the drain. She told me it went to a plant. She meant a water refinery plant, but for a while after that, I thought that somewhere out there was a plant so big it needed everyone's bath water to grow. :P

Between the ages of 7 and 9 I truly believed that Freddy Krueger lived in the hot water tank in my basement. When I'd have to go to the basement to get anything I would creep down the stairs slowly until the bottom step then I would run as fast as I could to get whatever it was I needed (usually some toy I'd left down there) and then I would bolt back up the stairs as to not disturb him.

My brother and I had bunkbeds pushed against the wall. I used to believe if I piled all of my stuffed animals on the open side of the bed they would protect me from any monsters or "bad men" that would try to get me during the night.

When I was 5 or 6 I used to think bees lived in the corners of my bedroom and would sting me when my lights went out. I would scan each corner over and over before finally falling asleep with the light still on.