What did you worry about as a kid?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

For me it is like one iota of what our kids are dealing with today. Covid, and shootings, and the environment collapsing. And a first lady that uses the F word in the same sentence as Christmas!?

Makes my ice cream falling off my cone, into the sand, while riding my bike home, pretty damn miniscule.

Makes me want to work with kids... But jeez what in the world would you even say to them?

[hlthe2b]

1. USSR and nuclear war... Some things haven't changed.

But an awful lot of additional horror...

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. Did you actually understand that ? For me it was

Just a thing to do, hunker down. Perhaps I was too young. Only vivid memory was that " dropping a bomb sound" that airplane's made. Have not heard that sound in forever. Still wonder what that was.

[hlthe2b]

9. Just the emotional sense of fear when adults spoke about it...

A few years later, though, watching movies of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I certainly "got it"...

[moonscape]

42. I was terrified. I kept a scrapbook

during the Cuban Missile Crisis with articles and annotated it with my own fear.

I recall being on the Croatian Coast as a pre-teen and asking my uncle what the different-colored license plates meant/were for. He, native Croatian but Swiss citizen then, said they were Communists. I vividly recall my quiet fear, wanting to somehow slink down into the car seat …

[3catwoman3]

48. Sonic boom from...

...breaking the sound barrier, perhaps?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

54. Cool but no. This is more like a small plane dropping a bomb

[Srkdqltr]

17. The only nightmare I remember was about sirens going off and then the bright light and I woke up .

So nuclear war. We watched the bomb tests on tv.

[crickets]

28. Same here.

I had a recurring nightmare that Soviet soldiers had arrived in my neighborhood. I never told anyone until my sister and I compared notes decades later. We'd both had them and wished we'd confided in one another at the time.

At school I remember our class being shown an educational film about bomb tests that scared the daylights out of me.

It wasn't a constant worry, but it was hard to forget sometimes given the fallout shelter signs were everywhere then.

[Ouroborosnek]

31. I had a similar dream when I was young

and seeing Soviet tanks rolling into our town.

[crickets]

34. It sounds like a lot of us did.

I'm a bit surprised no one has studied the effects the Cold War had on children.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

53. Do you remember the sound of planes whistling

down like a bomb was dropping? And that sound does not exist anymore. Note to self... Find out what that was

[crickets]

84. I do remember that sound, but only from movies.

It was terrifying, and intended to be. The Germans in WWII attached air driven sirens to certain planes (they called them Jericho trumpets) and created the same effect on bombs with strategic fin holes or attachments to make the screaming sound as the bombs fell. It was part of the psychological warfare of the day. It still works really well, even if it's just in the movies, doesn't it?

[pecosbob]

72. I was convinced as a teen in the early seventies that the world had no future

and then I went to fight the cold war. Now we know there are other things just as scary as nuclear war.

[csziggy]

92. Yes, especially after reading Pat Frank's "Alas, Babylon"

It was set not very far from where I lived in Central Florida so I recognized some of the places mentioned in the book. The aftermath of a nuclear war depicted was so bad, I decided I wouldn't want to live through one. I think it was one of the factors in my choice early on to not have children.

Plus going through the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't help at all. My Dad making sure we had a plan of what to do and where to take shelter if the bombs started falling scared the hell out of my eleven year old self.

[Model35mech]

98. Yes, I grew up 35 miles from Chicago and feared it as a nuclear target

Now at the age of 70 I still can't go into Chicago (or any mega-city) without that shadow clouding my emotions. When I got back from Vietnam, RCA Data Services assigned me to work in Chicago's loop. I had to quit after 6 months because being in the center of Chicago 6 days a week wracked me with anxiety...

I got no compensation for that mental crisis, but I did turn to getting a college education with my GI Bill, and that terminated in a PHD, which introduced me to a whole lot of crazies who I had no idea existed.

My parting comment on this is early psychological twists in perception can have very long lasting effects.

[Ocelot II]

2. Nuclear war, total destruction of the world.

[onecaliberal]

3. Getting Nuked.

[uppityperson]

4. School bombings, getting pregnant, nuclear war

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. Whether I would again, today, get an ass beating from my father.

That was what worried me most.
Next was would I get enough to eat for supper.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

10. We were lucky...just him " touching the belt"was enough

I remember always being hungry though. I don't know if it's cuz we were poor or if that's just the way kids are, always hungry

[Ferrets are Cool]

80. No doubts here. It was because we were very poor.

$40 a week for a family of 4.
Yeah, I got the touching the belt almost daily too. Sucked to be mentally abused like that constantly.

[llmart]

100. Same here.

Though I didn't get beat as much as some of my siblings (I was a goody two shoes), I still dreaded it when the hour for him to come home from work approached. I also worried about if there'd be enough food to eat. I grew up in a family of nine people and my father wasn't the best provider, so towards the end of a week what was in the fridge was pretty meager.

When you have immediate worries like that you can't be bothered worrying about if there'll be nuclear war.

[PortTack]

7. Monsters under the bed...when I was really young, the dark.

[Arazi]

8. Quicksand and shark attacks

I had zero possibility of running into either but I spent a lot of time fretting on what I WOULD do if I ever faced such peril.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. Do you remember what you would would have done?

Quicksand was a HUGE thing for us too. That's one good thing! The world is free of quicksand?

[chowder66]

49. Lol. I still have nightmares every so often about quicksand.

For me it was quicksand, tornadoes, nuclear war, prowlers, flashers and phone calls with creepy heavy breathers.

[ok_cpu]

90. Came here to say quicksand!

What was it about Gen X and quicksand?

I also lost a lot of sleep over a tabloid headline that said the Moonies were invading the US from Mexico. Reality was no match for my imagination in that case.

[Greybnk48]

104. Quicksand phobias were from those goddamn Tarzan movies.

Always with the quicksand; scenes always ended with someone sucked under and their pith helmet floating on the surface.

[Cartoonist]

11. Martians

I could never be sure about them. The movie War of the Worlds scared me, but the TV show My Favorite Martian showed me another side.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

14. Or just the fear/awe of what could be out there ?

Can't even imagine how you as a child could thing about such things with all the horror today.

[Cartoonist]

86. We didn't have school shootings back then. nt

[Mr.Bill]

13. I was a very small child.

I was the smallest kid in the class every year until about 5th grade. I genuinely worried I would never be able to reach the pedals or see over the dashboard to drive a car.

I wound up being about 5'7".

[Laura PourMeADrink]

22. Oh wow that must have been horrible to think about

all the time. Guess that's a plus with the youth of today... So much more inclusive than we were.

[Mr.Bill]

25. It had it's upside.

I got into the movies for the under 12 price until I was about 15. When I was about 10 and we went to the local auto races, under six was free. My dad was my willing accomplice as we aproached the gate he would hold my hand and I would walk in for free. They never questioned it.

I got carded every where I bought alcohol until I was about 30. I genuinely looked like Opie Taylor. Ron Howard today would look like he belonged in our family pictures. He and I are about the same age.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

58. Funny how parents were willing accomplices. That

was definitely a thing.. to try and "get in" places. Like the drive in movies!

[Mr.Bill]

61. We weren't rich.

I think my dad's attitude was hey, I don't want to be dishonest, but 50 cents is another beer.

[jg10003]

73. I'm jealous. I was also the smallest kid but

I ended up at 5'4".

[Mr.Bill]

85. Well, at age 69,

I'm a little under 5'5".

[NowISeetheLight]

15. War

Nuclear War in the 70s and 80s. I joined the Navy in 83 out of HS and the communists were the enemy. Reagan was President and the Cold War was in full spring. That and getting bullied in school. Oh and being “outed”. Being gay was totally not OK then but I was so confused and closeted it didn’t matter.

I didn’t worry about book bans, anti-gay laws, school shootings, stuff like that.

[marybourg]

16. Nada. Was born during WWll. Afterwards was a golden age,

at least for NYC kids.

[TheBeam19]

18. Nuclear war was far and away the #1 worry.

Second place goes to: getting busted forging my mom’s signature on a bad interim grade report.

[pnwmom]

19. My mother dying.

Three of my grandparents died by the time I was 8, so I felt very vulnerable. And by the time I was 10 she was predicting she wouldn't live long, either.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

26. So sorry. You had to worry about that pnwmom!!!!

[pnwmom]

27. Thanks. I was the typical oldest child in a lot of ways,

and being very close to my grandparents was part of that. It was especially a shock when my grandmother had a heart attack and died.

Of course my mother was greatly saddened by that, too -- but it would have been better if she'd kept her thoughts about her reduced life expectancy to herself!

[alphafemale]

65. That is a very problematic thing for a parent to worry a child about.

Kids already get enough orphaned/abandoned neurosis pounded into them from Disney INC.

[eShirl]

20. surviving in the ice world brought about by nuclear winter

[Laura PourMeADrink]

24. Holy cow... You were SO much more aware and enlightened.

than we were. I am retroactively glad, would have kept me up every night.

[LakeArenal]

21. I worried about not getting caught by my parents.

Whatever it was….As an adult I realize I was a good kid.

Not war or nukes. Although I remember a couple duck and cover drills. In central WI. Never understood why anyone would nuke Fond du Lac WI.

Although once had a huge ordinance plant in
Baraboo that I didn’t know of as a kid.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

33. Have you figured out why you were so fearful? Of punishment?

I don't think adults realize how much their actions can affect kids. Convinced hyper-defensive people were blamed as kids for something they didn't actually do.

[Tom Kitten]

23. The solar system hurtling towards the Hercules constellation

I read this in one of those Herbert Zim natural science books for kids (anyone remember those?)
It was when I was like 7-8 and really interested in science and stuff. When I read the sun was hurtling towards some point in the constellation Hercules at about 20 miles per second and taking the earth with it! I got really worried, thought there was going to be a really big collision in a few years. The earth was going to be destroyed!
That and giant bug aliens... My folks let me watch the weekend creature features back then, probably warped my young impressionable mind back then.

[crickets]

32. Oh, I loved those movies!

Them! was a favorite - scared the crap out of me, but the fun kind of scared because you knew it wasn't real.

I'm sorry about the Hercules constellation scaring you so. For a little while back then, I worried about the sun blowing up. Not quite sure why, but it was probably a conflation of science shows with sci fi.

[Tom Kitten]

101. I loved Them too

It's funny looking back on how irrational our fears were. Plus I remember doing The duck and cover drills in school and not comprehending what the deal was having to do that. We had to cover the backs of our necks with one arm, I guess it was to protect them from the walls and ceilings collapsing on us.
The ants didn't bother me so much, I was always fascinated by them. Used to love watching the ant farm in our classroom and drawing pictures of them.
What terrified me as a kid was the Wolfman! I remember seeing it for the first time on TV (I was 5) and running, screaming into the corner of my bedroom and trying to hide. He's still sort of unsettling to me.
I know tonight I'm going to watch "The Deadly Mantis" on Svengoolie... Thought I'd mention it because it's one of the better giant bug movies.

[applegrove]

29. I had a nightmare of a skinny pumpkin headed man. Ran to my parents.

They calmed me down. I got that it was a nightmare and never wanted to have it again. Pumpkin head man did nothing in my dream. I was just scared of a half human.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

35. Do you like or hate pumpkins now.? Think it's interesting that

The pumpkin ( head) was skinny wonder what that means ?

[applegrove]

43. All I can think of was a piece of art my parents had in the den. It was a musician playing a guitar

He was exaggeratedly skinny. It was a skinny poster/painting and kind of modern. I didn't like it. Maybe that is where the skinnyness of pumpkin head man came from.

My mom didn't allow sweets in the house. I loved Halloween as I had a very sweet tooth and it was a chance to indulge that. So I like everything about pumpkins. I was not spooked at all by pumpkins in general.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

45. So interesting and funny! Can't imagine having a mom

who was aware enough to be against sweets. That's a plus A!

[applegrove]

46. She was a family doctor. We were not allowed margarine in the house

either. Only butter. Which is now recommended. The bad part of having a mom as a doctor is we were hardly ever allowed to stay home from school if we were sick.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

55. Oh wow. But you reminded me of what we used to

do. You would have a glass of water in the bathroom. Then make throw up noises and simultaneously throw the water down the toilet. Probably wouldn't have worked around your mom. But work like a charm with laymen.

[applegrove]

62. We were square heads. Nobody tried to trick there way out of school.

I think we all love learning. The House was full of books. A friend described my family at the cottage when we were adults: everyone with their nose in a book or magazine and very little talking I would add: till my sister visited then everyone would chatter.

[alphafemale]

79. I've heard even rats won't eat margarine.

It is not a food.

Especially hat whipped atrocity.

[Raine]

30. Nuclear destruction, drop drills in school made it very real

I had nightmares that I still remember.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

41. You must have been SO much more enlightened than I was

Glad in retrospect

Thought putting our hands over our head would thwart it.

[LeftInTX]

36. My dad was a pilot in the USAF. I had alot to worry about.

He went to Vietnam when I was 10

[Laura PourMeADrink]

39. Hear you. Saddest day of my life was at the Vietnam Memorial

In DC. Did your dad make it thru VN ok?

[LeftInTX]

56. Yes, but he came back weird

[Laura PourMeADrink]

63. Means he had a big heart,! Probably why you do. Hope no has to

experience what he, & you & your family went through. Just going to imagine that there's never war again

[peggysue2]

38. Nuclear War

Being turned into a crispy critter before I made it to my father's store about three blocks away from my school. Something terrifying about being on the street and getting zapped in a flash of red hot light.

That's how I thought about it as a kid. That and my eyes being turned into hard boiled eggs. Saw that in a movie. LOL.

Only I wasn't laughing then.

[mvd]

40. Socializing in school. Not guns, but the normal part of school

I have always had trouble socializing. Also was very afraid of EBS tests as a kid. I had a nice childhood. Now my worries are big.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

50. Remember when the world stopped when there was

breaking news?

Maybe everyone has a silly story about trying to fit in at school? Can you imagine what it would be like if you knew as much as you know now, to go back?

Grew up in the suburbs and one night in the summer there was a snake on our street. All the neighbors were outside talking about it. Of course, I had to bring that up in Show and Tell. I couldn't remember the word "slithered" . And all I could come up with, in front of the whole class, was that the snake "walked" down our street. I actually can still, to this day, hear the mocking laughter.

[Chellee]

44. Step on a crack, break your mother's back.

Someone told me this when I was 5, and I was horrified that I might inadvertently hurt my mother. I was hyper vigilant about it too, not just the sidewalk, but the street, grout lines between tiles, where a threshold met the floor, anything that could be remotely considered a crack. I can't remember when I figured out that that was not going to happen, but I do remember being incredibly anxious that merely walking around was fraught with peril.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

47. Wonder if kids today still have crazy thoughts. Probably yes!

Remember someone telling us that even if you have the tiniest drop of drugs you will be hooked for the rest of your life. There was no internet to research. We just believed what anyone told us! Don't recall ever thinking, "oh man, that person who said that is BS"

So funny about the cracks!!! Wonder if anyone's mom ever actually broke their back and it was traced back to their child stepping on a line.

[William769]

51. How fast summer vacation started.

We didn't have cable back then and we lived in rural Kentucky.

[ultralite001]

52. Polio... The family doctor had an iron lung in a back room at his office...

If you've never seen one, here's a story:

[link:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/texas-man-lives-70-years-in-an-iron-lung-i-never-gave-up-180979008/|]

Cranberries and cancer...

[link:https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-great-cranberry-scare-of-1959-wreaks-havoc-at-thanksgiving/|]

Nuclear war... I build a "bomb shelter" underneath my bed... Packed a suitcase with flashlight, peanut butter, crackers and military K-rations my dad had brought home after deployments... Couldn't sleep on my back because I didn't want to see the flash...

Alien invasion... "Invaders from Mars" was a torment...
[link:https://bit.ly/3akGfBr|]

[gopiscrap]

57. I worried about my mother getting sick

or dying, because my father had died from the Vietnam War when I was 7.

And, she did die when I was 15. I was a foster child for the final 3 years of my life.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

60. Wow. So sorry! I didn't mean to bring up bad memories

[TlalocW]

59. I remember being about 6 and waking up in the middle of the night

So I read a Richie Rich comic that I had read dozens of times before. The main story concerned some evil scientists stealing the moon and demanding Richie's father pay a ransom for it, but Richie figured out they had ONLY turned it invisible. I remember there was a full moon that night so I went outside to look at it (small farming town), but I couldn't find it so I ran to mom and dad's room and woke up mom telling her the moon had been stolen. Or at least turned invisible.

[Hekate]

66. Nuclear war. Looking back, we were so very close in time to WW II that it colored everything...

… beneath the veneer of relative prosperity and optimism. We saw photos of the concentration camps and of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I have not heard a sonic boom for many years now, but the sky over San Fernando Valley at that time was full of them — and one day one of the military jets crashed into the playground between my elementary school and the junior high, killing 13. When the jet hit the ground we all thought we were dead and that it was the start of a war.

Having said that, let me say that school was a safe place, where learning to navigate the minefields of social life was the biggest hazard once I left elementary school.

My mother filled me with warnings about talking to strangers, beginning my inculcation into womanhood — not walking alone at night, always being aware of my surroundings. So, as I grew up, assault entered my fears, especially as when I was 11 the case of a disappeared 12 year old girl hit the news — picked up, raped, murdered, dumped.

But one thing we never gave any thought to was mass murder randomly applied. We were not in a war zone, and this was America.

That’s what we have now: mass murder randomly applied by death cultists. Our children are not allowed to feel safe in their schools. We are not allowed to feel safe in ordinary shared public spaces. The damage to the psyches of our children is incalculable, because this threat is not from a foreign country, nor from a presumably (hopefully) avoidable rapist — but from within us as a society, a culture, a nation, every damn day.

[frogmarch]

67. Them!

I was creeped out for weeks after seeing the sci-fi movie Them when it first came out in 1954. I was 10 and kept a close watch on the skies, looking for giant flying ants.

(Look for James Arness. )

[jg10003]

74. scariest movie ever.

[MandelaObama]

68. Getting trapped in a car underwater

I came across the tragic Mary Jo Kopechne/Ted Kennedy story way too young and the discussion and photographs around it seared into my brain. For years, I would have a deep and abiding fear of being trapped in a car underwater to the extent that I'd shudder even if our car was driving past a passage of water. Still haven't completely overcome it, although I'm much better

Also getting trapped in an elevator. We had a relatively small elevator at a supermarket where we lived and, for some reason, it instilled a real fear of getting trapped indefinitely in there (and in a lot of other elevators). It's only happened to me for a brief few seconds once, touch wood, and my fears have eased somewhat since then. I even went back to that small elevator in the supermarket decades later and made peace with it

[electric_blue68]

69. Nuclear war, my Mom's severe asthma

Nukes:
I live in NYC. Big Target. Air Raid tests ?1xmonth. I was precocious in some ways and even by the time I was 7 in 1960 I knew much of the world and certainly NYC early on would be destroyed.

I also lived in West Washington Hgts on near the top of a hill on the 6th floor. So NJ was not far across The Hudson River. When the volunteer fire fighters sirens wailed at night they sounded like the nuke drill sirens. But I didn't know that and I thought - soon they'd be wailing over here in NYC and KABLAAAAM!

In '71 NYC was the first stop of a national tour for Artifacts from Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Very sobering, even though I mostly knew what to expect.
_____________________

Mom:
My mom was a smoker. She got really ill with asthma when I was around 5 1/2+ yes (my sis was 6+ months). She did stop smoking
This strong, vibrant woman was so diminished so many times esp the first several years - she'd be coughing, and wheezing sooo badly. A then nebulizer the size and heavy as a filled suitcase helped a fair amount.

But we still walked around on eggshells every time anyone got sick with colds etc. .Even when she got way better 12+ yrs later and stayed that way (away 6 months at a special hospital) we still had to be careful when we were sick.
At least she lived more vibrantly again for several decades.

[jcgoldie]

70. I work with kids

They are normally upbeat with a sense of humor. They do not perseverate on such issues. They have a good time. Like kids always.

[betsuni]

71. Serial killers was a big one.

Ted Bundy, later Green River Killer -- the Pacific Northwest seemed to be teeming with them. I was too young to be a victim, but fit the Ted Bundy victim description: brown hair parted in the middle. Hated to walk home from school all alone near wooded areas, ran.

My town was near a very large military base and was afraid of the young soldiers on their days off driving around drunk. Again, hated to walk home from school and have a car full of them hoot and cat call at me even though I was just a little girl. Some of the girls at school dated them and there were pregnancies, sometimes violence. A high school classmate's ex killed her whole family but she happened to be out that night. Hated the sound of gunfire from the practice ranges.

As the seventies went on, the department store in the local mall closed down, one by one businesses left. Local dairy closed, factories closed. Generic big box stores and chain restaurants eventually sprouted up along the highway. Crime increased. Our house was burglarized and vandalized several times until my parents got a security system and two big dogs. Little grocery store in town was robbed so many times the family that had owned for decades sold it, new owners were from Iran and eventually one of the brothers was shot and killed in a robbery.

My freshman year in college I attended a student/faculty event and my anthropology teacher asked some of us about nuclear war. Something had been on tv about it, probably a movie. We all said we were very worried and thought some kind of nuclear war could happen. He smirked and said, "Really? Interesting." He never, ever, shared any of his own opinions, so he wouldn't say what he meant. I felt stupid.

[Emile]

75. Vietnam War

[Dorian Gray]

76. I use to

hide under my covers, fearful that witches would come into my room and do spells on me.

Yeah, not the same.

[raccoon]

77. Nuclear war. Nt

[Skittles]

78. I worried about a lot when I was a kid

a mentally ill father who eventually offed himself, a mother completely dependent on him, a severely autistic brother, moving every year, sometimes overseas.....I slept on an alcoholic aunt's couch and looked after her two toddlers when my dad was hospitalized for a year....but I know what you mean, I went to school with kids whose only care seemed to be about what toys they had or what school won a football game

[MineralMan]

81. Nuclear war. I had dreams, as a child of

looking toward Los Angeles, which was about 40 miles away, and seeing a nuclear explosion. Recurring dreams. I suppose they came from all of the A-bomb drills I went through in grammar school.

[SYFROYH]

82. As a young kid, nuclear annihilation, as a teen it was AIDS

[Chainfire]

83. My worries were more immediate than nuclear war.

Growing up with a violent alcoholic father, every day was a potential adventure. I did have minor issues, like not having warm Winter clothes, or being a bit hungry at times, but they were not as serious as facing a mean, abusive drunk. However, I have to admit, that those problems were somewhat mitigated, by having the community treating the children as outcasts for being part of such a dysfunctional family. I grew up to be financially stable, with a good marriage and kids, and I now live a comfortable retirement, but even 60 years later, my schoolmates still want to treat me as some kind of lesser person for being the child of the town drunk.

[Greybnk48]

87. Being vaporized by an atom bomb.

We drilled all the time. I was also afraid of Polio and having to be in an iron lung. Pollution was pretty bad in the late 50's early 60's too.

[Elessar Zappa]

88. During the first gulf war,

I was extremely frightened of Saddam Hussein. I was 6 years old and could see several hotels from my bedroom window. I always thought Saddam was going to bomb the hotels.

[RobinA]

89. My Parents

dying in a car accident, my grandparents dying because they were "old" (late 50's, early 60's), Nazis, cholera, and being abandoned by my parents because I was "difficult." Although I was born in 1958, the nuclear thing never really scared me on a serious level.

[Polybius]

91. "And a first lady that uses the F word in the same sentence as Christmas!?"

Please explain that one. Which First Lady? What did she say, "Merry Fucking Christmas"?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

93. It was Melania caught complaining about her Christmas decorating duties.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

96. How'd ya miss it? . Melania on tape. Excerpt:

Melania Trump had a rough night on Thursday, testing positive for coronavirus, like her husband, but also seeing the publication of a recorded conversation with a former friend in which she asked: “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?”

The first lady also said the media should give her “a fucking break” over Donald Trump’s widely condemned child separations policy at the southern border.

[Stinky The Clown]

94. I am not given to nightmares. For me, they're rare. Playhouse 90's Alas Babylon gave them to me . .

. . . for weeks. This was in the late 50s.

That story has stuck with me. It is about a nuclear war with the USSR that wipes out most of the world's population. One of the wiped out areas was where we lived.

While production values back then were not what they are today (think of a typical Twilight Zone episode) for a young person (me) it seemed very realistic. Given the times and the Cold War ethos, more than a realistic TV show, it was a real possibility and maybe even a likelihood.

THAT kept me up at night with worry.

[highplainsdem]

95. Nuclear war.

[11 Bravo]

97. My Dad having to go (back) to war.

[womanofthehills]

99. Mine is weird - my fertility

Being an only child who always wanted a sister, my mom told me she could not have any more kids. So, I grew up worrying that maybe I would not be able to have kids. She didn’t explain till I was older that it was a choice because of her high blood pressure, but I was irrational about it and the seed was planted.

So when I got married, I insisted on getting pregnant right away.

[roamer65]

102. ...

[roamer65]

103. ...

[JustAnotherGen]

105. Nuclear war

Communist Invasions and white southerners rising again.

My dad was a Cold Warrior and black man born in the South in 1941.

He raised us to survive.