Last week the girls watched The Princess Bride for the first time. They both really enjoyed it, but when The Albino (or, as Lillie calls him, The White Guy) came on, Lillie Freaked. Out. She just went out of her tree. This was the most scared I'd seen her. I think maybe ever.

If you've seen the movie, the guy is not that scary. Why he struck a chord with her, I don't know.

The Wizard of Oz was probably the first movie that freaked me out. The witch was scary and the flying monkeys were freaky scary. David likes to tell the girls that The Wizard of Oz scares him. Not in the past tense - he says it scares him still. They think it's a great joke.

I also remember being really scared by The Shaggy D.A. I saw it when I was in kindergarten and the whole concept was scary. When I got a little older, I saw it again and didn't understand what was so scary about it.

The Stepford Wives was also very disturbing. I don't know how old I was when I saw it, but it played into all my kid fears.

I don't think my girls tell each other scary stories, but my sister and I did. The one that sticks in my mind was a story about a babysitter who kept hearing weird noises in the house. The owner had told her just to put her hand under the couch if anything scared her and if the dog licked her hand, she didn't need to worry. So, she kept putting her hand under the couch, and the dog kept licking her hand. The story culminates with her finding the dog chopped up in the bathtub and a note, "Humans can lick too." The story makes almost no sense, but to my young mind, it was unbelievably scary.

I read a lot of Stephen King books when I was in junior high. One of his short stories made me really freaked out about garbage disposals. When we first had one, it really bothered me. I still feel a little anxious whenever I run ours, but I'm getting over it.

What were some of your kid fears? What movies and stories scared you?