Five Things That Creep Me Out

1. Pregnancy portraits. Half-naked pregnant women, cradling their exposed round tummy, whilst looking down at it adoringly. Double the creep factor if the husband is in the portrait too. Triple the factor is they display it in a prominent place their home for any innocent visitor to happen upon.

2. New Age Music.

3. Red Velvet. This stems from an incident at my grandma’s house when I was little. As I remember it, her house was all dusty red velvet, milk glass (in and of itself okay by me), and contact paper.

4. Chalk. I can’t even touch it. Just thinking about it now, makes my palms sweat.

5. Old Victorian shoes. This is the kind of creepy thing you would never know about unless you and two of your friends get a Eurorail pass for the summer and visit a very old castle in France. Then, as you walked through the castle the dust particles were illuminated by the summer light coming in through the fringed heavy curtains. It is very hot.

Then you approached a little plexiglass box with small white satin shoes displayed on red velvet (see #3!) inside. The tour person begins to explain that the women wore their shoes very small back then. He proceeded to tell you about their undergarments, wigs and makeup.

You start to get a little woozy, then the make up talk starts again. You begin to picture this unfortunate girl all bound-up, with thick, very thick, smelly white powder caked on her unexfoliated face. Then another look at those cursed shoes and that was it. You faint. You guess that what happened…. lights go out, knees get weak.

Those old Victorian shoes really, really creep you me out.