THE POWERS THAT BE

As a child, I was a true fraidy-cat (or a cowardly lion cub, if you prefer).
Here is a list of things that gave me serious cases of the willies:

1. Aliens from Mars Attacks: AKA heads of lettuce with bloodshot scarlet eyes. I was terrified of both lettuce and the local video club (as long as it was decorated with the Mars Attacks poster). My lovely divorced mother, aware of this fact, used these aliens as the boogie-man.
   
2. Animatronic chimp at a local shoe shop: he had a dark baritone voice, that I found rather threatening. Guess how I felt when he finally was gone!
3. Lovebirds: or "scarybirds" to me as a child, for having white eyerings that made their eyes look uncanny. I wouldn't frequent a café or shop where lovebirds were kept as pets, even if bribed with a regiment of Kelly dolls and/or a truckload of marshmallows!
   
4.  Hyacinth Macaw at Gothenburg Zoo: despite sporting Sweden's national colours, this chap had some nice yellow eyerings around black eyes, on a Prussian blue face. Think of a huge blue lovebird and you get the idea.
   
5.  Romanesque art in Catholic school canteen: Jesus and his disciples looked like humanoid Mars Attacks aliens to me (lightbulb heads, huge sclerae, blank, expressionless irises). I never ate there.
6.  Nuns in picture, Catholic school chapel: Another thing shown at the "Little Catholic School of Horrors". The nuns, seen at work in a nineteenth-century hospital, had narrow black clefts for eyes and tiny Mona Lisa smiles. To cut a long story short, they didn't look human.
7. Androgynous figure in charity poster: a wrinkled face without any facial hair, and a white robe. This character gave me the willies because his/her gender was unclear. Blame the Catholic Church for a great deal of my childhood scares!
8. Mutua General de Seguros old (1990s-early 2000s) logo: A half-faced sprectral figure, gender unknown and ambiguous (bobbed hair, and, on the chest, pectorals or breasts?)... Then the half-light and half-dark face, whose dark half seemed not to exist. And that eerily soaring shawl... My favourite bookshop Argot was beyond the local MGS office, but getting there was like venturing into the lair of a live dragon to get to its treasure. When the insurance company reached its hundredth year in 2007, it changed to a more stylized logo, similar to a flame or a lily. Praise R'hllor!

Disney films deserve to be mentioned apart, because they're literary adaptations, and for being more familiar to readers:

1. Wicked Queen Dowager (AKA Snow White's Stepmother), Fruit-Seller Mode: after drinking a self-distilled potion, Disney's first villainous stunner (to be followed by Maleficent, Lady Tremain, Gothel, and the Snow Queen) transforms into a remarkably hideous crone, with a hooked nose and the type of eyes that I saw in both lovebirds and Mars Attacks aliens.
   
    Scary-to-Sandra eyes, with huge sclerae, tiny irises and not a glimpse of a twinkle.
2. Pinocchio: when I received this film on VHS for Christmas, I quickly defenestrated it from a fifth floor (luckily, there were no casualties). Why? For the puppetmaster Stromboli, but especially for the whale incident. As a kid, the sole thought made me shiver.
   
3. The Brave Little Tailor: specifically, the scene where Willie accidentally drinks Mickey.
   
   Along with  the whale scene in Pinocchio, it impressed me a lot, for having got to view what a living thing looks like from within. I took this fear of being devoured up to ten. I even had my mother "bowdlerise" "The Three Little Pigs", "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Seven Little Kids", and "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", by deleting or altering the parts where characters were swallowed alive by predators.
4. Mr. Dawes Senior (the banker from Mary Poppins): the last item on the list is a live-action character. I gave him the boot for being a bearded bastard who, aside for looking like a corrupted Santa Claus (a lanky and cold-eyed Santa with a longer and pointier beard), caring more about business and money than about the quality of life of poor street sellers (he states that they should let the old pigeon-feed lady eat cake).
   
    Raised in an all-female household, I was skeptical towards males in general. And, not knowing Cromwell or Hitler back then, I found in Mr. Dawes Sr. the epitome of masculine coldness and inhumanity. To add more fuel to the fire, the portrayal of God the Father in both a local church and Baroque art, a gent with a bushy white beard, resembled either Santa Claus or Mr. D. Sr. with the recommended BMI. And so, I got to find even the Lord himself scary (Soon, I would realize that the Creator cares as little for humankind as Mr. Dawes Senior for pigeons and street sellers!).