Childhood Fears

I'm a scaredy cat, generally speaking. I'm scared of a lot of things: the dark, spiders, heights, ghosts, and fire, to name a few. Thankfully this list is much shorter than when I was little. When I was a kid I was scared of more things. I had one specific fear that was really bad until I was around 4 or 5, that is pretty ridiculous, and which I'm embarrassed about now. My family still teases me about it because it was so silly. I don't mean to offend anyone with this, so be forewarned. It was just the fear of an imaginative little child.

I was scared of little people.

The first time I encountered a little person was in daycare. The daycare owner's brother and his wife were little people and so was their daughter, who attended the daycare. It really bothered the owner that I was afraid of her niece, so we were asked to leave. It didn't matter how much she was explained to me, she freaked me out. She was older than me, but the size of my little brother.

I thought she was an elf.

This is the only incident of this fear I remember. I may have blocked further incidents from memory. This past summer my grandmother was telling me a story about when we were at the grocery store once, and a little person walked down the aisle we were in. I, apparently, completely lost it. I started crying and hiding behind my grandmother. I can't imagine how embarrassing this must have been for her. My parents too - can you imagine your kid getting kicked out of daycare because she was scared of another kid? I really was a wuss.

I got over the fear, obviously. I don't remember when that happened either, but maybe when I learned that elves weren't real, and that these little people were just that: people. But, for a while there, I was irrationally afraid of little people.

So, am I alone in this? Did any of you have embarrassing and irrational fears when they were little? How about now? What freaks you out?