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Let me tell you something and I’m gonna make it perfectly clear: when I was a kid, I 100% believed that quicksand would be everywhere and I thought about it quite often.
I think I felt this way for two reasons: one was that I loved the Indiana Jones movies and you know that he had to deal with quicksand, and the second reason was that one of my favorite video games was Pitfall…if you know you know. If you don’t, look it up.
When you were a kid, did you think quicksand was going to be a big problem in your life?
AskReddit users shared their thoughts.
1. Me, too.
“Not only did I think it was a common danger, I thought if you got stuck in it you were done for.
Based on the amount of information I received about quicksand during childhood from cartoons this seemed like a reasonable outcome.”
2. Don’t go in the woods.
“When I was a little fella I was scared to go out back in the woods on our property cause I “knew” the quicksand was waiting to swallow me up.”
3. You’re right.
“Quicksand isn’t as much of a threat these days since the floor became lava in more recent times.”
4. Ugh!
“You can actually never be pulled completely down over your head.
Your body is less dense than quicksand/ mud, so you will always float, round about chest high is the lowest you can sink.
That being said, the way that people d** is from being stuck, then dying from dehydration if never found.”
5. Avoid that area.
“I did. And not only have I never seen quicksand, I’ve never even heard of it!
No one’s like “hey take I-95 bc I-90 has a bunch of quicksand on it”.”
6. Remember that one?
“Yep.
I attribute this to having watched The Neverending Story about a hundred times when I was a kid.
There’s quicksand. If doesn’t end well.”
7. Where is it?!?!
“Yeah and I tried to find it everywhere.
Even tried to make it one time and let a hose run for 4-5 days.
All that happened was that patch of grass grew a bit faster for a while.”
8. Fairly certain.
“I was fairly certain that quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be.
John Mulaney has a funny bit about quicksand and falling pianos, if you’re interested.”
9. I remember it well.
“The Bermuda Triangle was the reason I developed a fear of flying anywhere that involved flying over the ocean.
In my head, the Bermuda Triangle took up a large portion of the ocean and planes were forced to fly around it or crash.”
10. Better be careful.
“This and piranhas.
I avoided our community pool at night thinking I was going to get eaten by them.”
11. And then we have this…
“Dude if you’ve ever experienced quicksand you’d know that is actually pretty close to the truth. All it needs is a consistent water source, loose soil, and nowhere to drain, and you have the recipe for quicksand.
When I was less than 10 there was a drainage pipe that led into this small little lake next to my apartments. In front of the pipe there was so much loose soil that it actually created a large patch of quicksand, which then led into the lake. As a kid we all steered clear of the area, since there were nutrias that were known the attack people’s dogs, but occasionally we would sit on this bench above the drain pipe.
One day I went there by myself and, when I hopped off the bench, I walked in front of the drain pipe. It supported my tiny body’s weight for a little bit, but as I walked around eventually my foot found a thin spot on the soil and my leg was instantly engulfed up to my knee. The crazy thing is that all those old cartoons actually ended up saving my life. I remembered seeing in those shows that when someone got a leg stuck in quicksand, they would try to push with their other leg which would then get stuck.
I was slowly sinking and I couldn’t feel a bottom so I knew if my other leg got caught I was as good as d**d. I remember vividly that I laid my other leg down kind of sideways to increase its surface area, then shimmied it up and down to counteract the sinking. As soon as I started moving horizontally, again the cartoons came to save my life.
I remembered that the only way I’d ever seen someone get out of quicksand in TV was if someone else came and pulled them out, or if they got ahold of a branch, so I shimmied ever closer to the nearest branch and grabbed onto it for dear life. It was literally like something out of an old cartoon, a child stuck in quicksand yanking on a branch to pull himself out.
When I finally did get loose I left my shoe behind in the quicksand, and I remember looking at the now flat quicksand and realizing how easily I could have been that shoe, only for the quicksand to smooth itself out forever concealing that I was inside of it.
It honestly might be the first memory I have where I truly understood how easy it was to d**. Then I go home and get yelled at by my mother for losing my shoe and covering myself with mud 😂. To this day I still don’t think she believes this actually happened…”
What were some of your other childhood fears?
Talk to us in the comments and fill us in.
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