Christie Mastric

A short while ago, I decided to reminisce about my childhood, and I ended up going down one wormhole after the other.

I’m not sure what set it off, but one of my memories had to do with a local 1960s children’s television show in the South Bend, Indiana, area called “D.D. Donovan,” which featured a puppet that resembled a dog wearing glasses.

Although the show entertained me, relying on memory only, I have few specific recollections of the show. However, one that stood out was a character on the show that I believe was called the Cat Lady. Again, relying solely on my memory, it appeared to be someone in a cat outfit making claw-like gesticulations with its hands.

What I do remember is that it freaked me out in such a major way that I had to leave the room when she was on TV. I thought Cat Lady wanted to strangle somebody, including me.

My dad had a hard time understanding that.

In fact, when I was by myself — in the daytime — at my grandparents’ house in Michigan City, Indiana, I imagined Cat Lady coming toward me with those hand movements.

Not wanting to perish before I reached puberty, I ran to the safety of other people on the other side of the house.

It embarrasses me to this day that I did that, but a child’s imagination can conjure up many things.

A piece of artwork displayed in the basement of my childhood home was of a woman with arched eyebrows who was knitting, or taking part in a similar activity.

The combination of the malevolent look on her face and her hands, which again I imagined might strangle somebody, terrified my sister and I, so much so that we didn’t want to be in our basement alone with the probably harmless painting. Because of a quirk of geography, outside light illuminated the painting in the dark basement, accentuating its foreboding quality.

Many people have irrational fears, but the ones we have in our childhoods sometimes take on a mythic and exaggerated quality. For instance, cars without hubcaps creeped me out. Maybe it was youthful snobbery on my part, but I didn’t trust drivers who felt no urgent need for hubcaps since that look definitely appeared sinister.

Radio transmitters also scared me. Laugh if you want, but since they tended to be located apart from the actual stations in rural areas, they made the few sporadic people who worked in the buildings vulnerable to imaginary monsters from black and white science fiction movies that preyed on solitary employees.

See our irrational all this is? But that’s what made my formative years fun.

My childhood best friend Matthew and I used to make the most of our idle time and runaway thoughts by making up mini-dramas. My favorite was “Tornado Warning.” Best played on a cloudy, ominous day, Matthew would play the meteorologist making the actual warning. He would frame his head between the rungs of my swingset’s ladder so it looked as if he were on television.

The particular appeal of this game, I think, was to whip ourselves into a minor frenzy. It was an exciting break from marbles and hopscotch.

Bedtime reading was supposed to be fun, and for the most part it was, but I used to listen to my dad reading “Little Orphant Annie” to me.

By the way, it’s “orphant,” not “orphan.”

Its refrain of “An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!” was a cautionary tale that frightened the bejeezus out of me. A little girl made fun of “ever-one, an’ all her blood an’ kin,” so she ended up being snatched by two great big “Black Things a-standing’ by her side.”

To avoid a similar fate, James Whitcomb Riley told me to “dry the orphant’s tear,” mind my parents and teachers, and help the poor and needy people.

It was a nice way to send me off to sleep.

Sometimes my activities bordered on the absurd. I would bury bath oil beads in the soil in the off chance a bath oil bead tree would spring up. Deep down I knew that wouldn’t happen, but it would have been fun if that happened.

At least it wouldn’t have scared me.

What scares me now, you may ask? Very little. Remember, I survived the make-believe Cat Lady, tornadoes that never came and fictional goblins, among other terrors. Now I am in fear of utility bills, car repairs and arthritis.

I think I prefer Cat Lady.