Comedian John Mulaney jokes in one of his stand-up routines that, as a child, he thought quicksand would be much more of a problem than it actually turned out to be.
Thanks to cartoons, kids are universally aware of – and even scared of – getting trapped in quicksand.
Just like John, one of my most irrational childhood fears also stemmed from a TV show.
I went through a phase in which I was terrified of somehow consuming or being afflicted by a parasite.
There was legitimately an instance when my dad had to talk me into going to sleep after having so many nightmares about it.
I don’t think I’m afraid of parasites anymore but I have never forgotten the exact scene of a TV show that sparked such intense fear in little Kayleen.
I can remember that each episode had a countdown from 10 and a lot of green, remedial-looking animations of people.
Despite remembering this so clearly that decades later I can still visualize the show, I had no recollection of what it actually was.
Upon doing some research, I found that it was a series called “The Most Extreme,” which aired on Animal Planet from 2002-2007.
The opening of the show began with a narrator reading: “Earth is a planet of extremes. Extreme places and extreme animals. But some animals are more extreme than others. Join us as we count down to find the most unusual, the most extraordinary… the most extreme.”
I’m no daredevil but it makes a lot of sense that I would like this show because I have always loved and been very fascinated by animals.
Each episode ranked animals in categories ranging from “jumpers” to “speed” to “smarts” (the number one animal in each of those were fleas, tiger beetles and parrots).
It seems like quite a wholesome, educational show, until I found the title of the episode that jumpstarted my nightmares: “Horrors.”
Surprise, surprise: according to this show, the most horrific animal in the world is the parasitic worm.
It took a little courage, but I decided that I would re-watch this episode as an adult and see if it really warranted my fears.
To start off, it was kind of silly, as it would mash up clips of animals with people screaming in old horror movies as they described the creatures’ scary attributes.
The first few animals were already familiar to me (and would have been even as a five-year-old), so that automatically knocked down the fear factor.
Descriptions of each animal in the countdown seemed to follow a pattern. The narrator explains what characteristics make the creature so scary, followed by a fact or two that explain why it really isn’t so bad.
For instance, a school of piranhas (number eight) “could strip the flesh from a cow in a matter of minutes.” But, they’re actually scavengers that tend to eat other fish that have already died.
Likewise, bears (number seven) “could kill you with one swipe of their mighty paw.” But, teddy bears are the best-selling toy of all time, so it seems most people don’t have a deep-rooted fear of the fuzzy animals.
The segments proceed through snakes, spiders and sharks, until they really take a turn for the worse with number one.
The parasitic worm – the only animal on the list I’d never heard of – is introduced as a “man-eating monster.”
The narrator describes “horrific worms that hunt us down,” such as a blood fluke, which will allegedly burrow through your skin to get into your bloodstream and can live up to 30 years there, “constantly laying eggs.”
Or what about roundworms?
They apparently live in one of every four people on the planet and “you might never know the worm is inside you.”
Oh, and by the way, a parasitic worm might cause you to experience elephantiasis. This fact was accompanied by an animation of a person’s leg growing to the “same shape, size and color as an elephant’s leg.”
The narrator was also kind enough to warn that “you can’t hide from worms, they’re everywhere.”
In hindsight, maybe I should give my younger self a little more credit for forming a fear around this.
I mean, seriously, the narrator even encouraged my bad dreams by reminding the viewers that “our nightmares might be full of ferocious beasts but the scariest things live inside our bodies.”
Nope… even 21 years after the episode first aired, there was no redeeming quality to show why number one isn’t actually that scary.
-Kayleen Petrovia is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.