A childhood belief about people

I had heard then term "kick the bucket" and took it very literally. When I was about 6 i kicked over the janitor's mop bucket at school. I was convinced I was going to die. One of my teachers was walking down the hall, and saw me sitting on the floor and crying. I couldn't manage to explain coherently why I was crying, and she just assumed I was crying out of fear of being in trouble. She alerted the janitor, who cleaned up the water. After I didn't die, for a year or so I thought that it would be ok to kick over a bucket if whatever was in it was ceaned up fast enough. Then someone explaines.