Mostly-Quashed Childhood Fears Reawakened by the Vampire Bat Fatality
1. Getting your baby toe severed by the car door when your sister slams it.
2. Being left behind at a gas station because you didn’t want to get back in the car, eventually becoming a less-self-sufficient Maniac Magee.
3. Earwigs colonizing your brain with their eggs because you didn’t wear a hat like your mom said.
4. Being throttled by your dad’s “phantom hand,” which is occasionally possessed by the spirit of a dead murderer.
5. The red fiery bull-creature from “The Last Unicorn” coming to push you into the ocean.
6. No one buying your “I have a stomach ache” excuse for needing your dad to pick you up early from the sleepover.
7. Being kidnapped by a drifter because you didn’t wash your hands with soap.
8. Owning generic soccer shorts instead of black Umbros, being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.
9. Eating dinner at your rich friend’s house, not knowing how to eat an artichoke.
10. Having to watch “My Girl” with the rest of your class, who sit totally calmly through Thomas NEEDING HIS GLASSES while you become an increasingly sodden mass of tears.
11. …vampire bats.