Just recently watched the uncut alternate ending of the 1986 musical hit Little Shop of Horrors, and it made me think of a childhood fear I once had while living my first few years of life a small town in the late 90s. You won't believe this, but I was afraid of plants. I know a lot of young kids at kindergarten age were afraid to eat their vegetables, even when their mother says consuming those garden fresh plants give them a clean bill of health. But me, I was afraid of plants, in general. Not just vegetables or carnivorous plants, but pretty much anything that grows in a garden, I wouldn't touch.

You know the flower patterns that could be found on some old furniture or wallpaper, right? If you know me very well, you know that I used to believe that when I touched one of those patterns, it would make a loud noise that would scare me, like a creepy laugh or a weird screaming noise. I have fond memories of lying down on a bed with flower patterns on the covers, and watching the flowers move, and hearing them scream at me for sitting on them. I couldn't even look at a Hawaiian shirt without freaking out.

And the fear of plants was not limited to patterns. I think I may have told you this awkward story before, but while I was playing outside in the healthy green grass of the front yard, I remember that moment when I stepped on a pile of grass that made a high pitched chuckling noise, like one of those Boo ghosts in Super Mario 64, or even the Poe ghosts from the two Zelda games that were released for Nintendo 64.

Believe it or not, my fear also included trees of all sorts. Palm trees, Christmas trees, shrubs, bushes, any tree you could think about, I was afraid of. Especially the Christmas trees that people displayed in their homes around the Christmas holidays. Yes, those fragile glass ornaments and those warm miniature light bulbs might be tempting to touch, but I didn't want to come a single inch closer to one, because of how I thought the branches were as sharp as thorns, or had something that could be too toxic for me to touch and feel.

One of those odd things I used to believe as a kid was that if you swallow a seed that you find in a fruit like a watermelon, a plant will start to grow inside your stomach and through your skin. And yes, I even thought mushrooms could grow right through your body, but I guess that would only happen in the rotting corpses of dead insects.

And yes, this fear also included fungi, coral, and sea sponges, which I used to think were like plants in a way.

Almost 20 years later, I have overcome this fear of plants in general, and I find a lot of plants quite fascinating, especially palm trees and Venus flytraps.  However, my fear of touching plants is just limited to a few patterns I just find strange.