Latest / Feedbag with Nat Lauzon / Episode 25: Gen X Childhood Fears: Quicksand, Killer Bees & Acid Rain
Transcript
- nat: welcome to Feedbag. I'm Nat, and Rupert's here. Hello. And today we're talking about the deadly dangers that Gen X thought would kill us. Are we? Okay. Let's start with everyone's favorite, which was the dangers, the perils of quicksand. Quicksand. I've yes. I saw that in a Gilligan's Island episode. Do you remember that? Yeah. And somebody was sinking in quicksand. my god. Like that was really gonna kill us all. That was a real thing. Yeah. It exists, right? Well, quicksand does exist. but For some reason in our childhood it was like in every adventure show and every and I actually did some fact checking. And you're right, it wasn't a Gilligan's Island episode a few times. Okay. It was Mr. Howell. Mr. Howell got stuck in it? Yeah, but I think there were other ones too. Okay. And The Six Million Dollar Man. Okay, another one of Quicksand. Okay, that's probably where I got it from because that was my favorite show. Yeah, you love that show. And The Princess Bride. Okay. Had Quicksand in it too. and so for some reason Yeah, we were all just af afraid of quicksand. Yeah, but do they even have quicksand in North America? Let me tell you a fun fact. Okay. I had an adjacent experience to quicksand when I was a teenager. There's this stuff in northern Ontario where I'm from called muskeg Muskeg. And I've told you about muskeg before. You have. I've I'm familiar with the story. Yeah, so muskeg like a peat bog. It's like it's like the peat. Just what's it called? Distritis. Detritus? Detritus. Okay. It's like it's like vegetation. Yeah. smooshed down into like this muddy, quick sandy type thing. And you can actually get very stuck in it. Like vehicles can get stuck in it and sink. And so I had an experience with muskeg as a teenager. I was just I was close to shore and it looks it looks shallow. Right. And then you step out. Of the boat and then you start sinking in the muskeg. Okay, but will you just completely disappear sink? N no, but you don't want to like stay in it. I don't know how how deep it is. But it always looks shallow. Like I was on a paddle boat and I got out to tow the paddle boat to shore. okay. And it looked shallow. And then as I started walking, I started sinking. And it was like it was up to my knee like past my knees real fast. Like it looked it was ankle depth, and then it was like Okay, but did you feel yourself getting sucked in? Yeah, it's su it's sucky. And and were you trying worried that you couldn't get out? Probably a bit in the moment 'cause it w I wasn't expecting it, but like I didn't think it would swallow me whole. But that would that's my closest experience with anything quicksandy. That's closer than most people will ever get to quicksand, I guess? Yeah, I think so. So it's it's ver it's like common in parts of Canada in Northern Ontario where I'm from and Musk egg. yeah. And when I sunk in it, yeah, and I scrambled out, I looked down at my legs and they were covered in leeches. Like in Stand By Me. It is Stand By Me. There were baby leeches which are harder to get off and like get in between your toes and stuff. I've had leeches on my legs too. My legs work. Covered in leeches. And that's another thing I learned about muskeg that leeches love the muskeg, apparently. You want to come lay here, bud? Come on. The dog likes to shuffle around as we do the podcast, so that's nice. There you go, Bolt. There you go. Center stage, buddy. So yeah, okay, so quicksand. Yep. Let me let me consult my notes here. notes. As you pet the dog. Okay. Crab head dad dog. A forlorn dog. well here's a question. Do you remember instructions on how to get out of quicksand? No. But it always seems to be somebody has to like throw you a stick. Yeah. And you gotta like they pull you out. Yeah. But no, no I think that was basically It's not to struggle. I you're not that's exactly it. It's like don't struggle, wait for somebody to throw you a stick. I think quicksand is a negligible fear in my life at this point. I'm past it. Other things that we were disproportionately afraid of as Gen X were killer bees. Yes. There was even a mo there's a movie about it. Was there? Yeah. They told us that there were African killer bees that were gonna That were migrating, I think, up through Mexico into the United States and Canada. Yeah. And they were gonna basically they were very violent and they would attack us. There was a movie about it called The Swarm. okay. Okay. So they it was like a real thing, but they sensationalized it. Yeah, of course. Like they do with everything. Right. And then we believe it. Well, yeah, as a kid or yeah, as an impressionable ute. I believed it for sure. Well, I'll tell you one thing that really scared me, and it's so dumb. There was just a copy of Newsweek magazine in the basement of my house when I was a little kid. And the cover just said, Canada, the true north, strong and free with a question mark next to it. And I all of a sudden got like, what if this isn't a free country? I remember really being scared of that for some dumb reason. It was just some stupid Newsweek article, but it traumatized me. But they got your attention. Yep. Did you bother reading the article? No. I'll just be scared from the title. Yeah, just ooh. I looked into killer bees. And they still exist. Yes, they do. Yeah. But they weren't nearly as big of an issue as as most things. What about those well, more recent thing of that would be those those hornets we were. Yeah. What are they kill what are they called? Not killer hornets. Something hornet. Are they hornets? Is it something or something wasp? Or something wasp. we look dumb right now. And everybody if you leave this unedited, everybody in the audience is going, It's this. It's this. I can look it up right now. God. Murder Hornet! Murder Hornet. The murder hornet. That's worse than killer. Yeah, because it's like intentional. Yeah, yeah. It's I didn't accidentally kill this person. I murdered Murdered. Murder. How about this one? Go for it. Piranhas. yeah. This is all from movies. Of course. It's all from movies from I think even in the six million dollar man there was an episode where he was attacked by friggin' piranhas. Well, no wonder. Man, that was a scare tactic show. I remember being afraid of piranhas, when that movie came because there were there were two piranha movies, one late seventies, one early eighties. And I just remember the cover showed a woman's legs and a piranha. Yeah, dangling. and and I also remember I think seeing a scene in that movie where she was just like bones in seconds. yeah. There would be like this like swarm of piranhas. Yeah. And they just like destroy the body in seconds. Well, I learned from a far side cartoon, I don't if this is true, that a school of piranha can scale. Skeletonize a cow in under two minutes. I guess if there's enough of Yeah, so no wonder we were afraid. And also, piranhas are fresh water. are they? So, like, conceivably they could be in a lake. They could be. But we have a lot of piranha here in Canada. Yeah. We have like our own creepy shit in the water. Like muskie. Do you know what muskie are? I've heard of muskie. Muskie are massive like pike. Well, they bite you, They're hu they can they'll eat ducks like ducks on the water. What? They're massive. And we're swimming with them. Poor ducks. Didn't the guy just got bit by one in the St. Lawrence River recently, a couple of years ago or something. a really bad bite on his calf or something. A muskie bit him, yeah. And I think they didn't I think they assumed it was a muskie because what else would bite it? yeah, right. Bite some bite you in the lake like that. that's creepy. I forgot about that. Me too. Yeah, so like, what's it the whatever? Elon Muskie. I kind of vaguely remember this fear that we had as children. Pop rocks and Coke. I didn't fall for that. You're not yeah, you would die if you had pop rocks and coke. Your stomach would explode. is that it? if you had pop rocks and then you drank Coke. That sounds like a good reasonable conspiracy theory. Yeah. Actually. It was an urban legend. Right. And you know who they said it happened to. wait. It's gonna be some child actor. Yes. Was it from a commercial or was it? And he was in a bunch of commercials? This must be in my subconscious. It has to be. He was in a very famous commercial, not repeated. is it is it hey Mikey, he likes it? Yes. Is it true that Mikey died from eating pop rocks? Pop rocks and Coke. Not true. Not true. Not true. It was Pepsi. Exactly. He was eaten by piranhas. Yeah. Killer bees. If you swallow a watermelon seed, it'll grow in your stomach. I never even heard that one. yeah, didn't Lori my friend Lori, she believed that one. She was really scared about sw swallowing watermelon seeds. Are these cautionary tails to stop you from doing something that might actually hurt you? But another one that I know about like candy related is I don't know, it's maybe on your list, is eating gum. Yeah. it's on your list? And then it take Why seven years? Why seven? Everybody said it was seven years. if you swallow gum, it's gonna stay in your and I just believe it. somehow gum's gonna go in a magic part of my stomach or get stuck there somehow. Stuck in the sides. yeah, and how come later when you're doing a colonoscopy, they aren't like just scraping gum off the sides like under a school desk, they're scraping your colon gum off the sides. Little graffiti in there too. Yeah. There's no polyps, ma'am, but we found some ancient hubba. From well, it's only seven years old 'cause it'll comes out after that. So he this is twenty eighteen gum or twenty nineteen gum. Could you imagine if you ate a whole pack of hubba, swallowed it. Yeah. And exactly seven years to the day you just pooped out gum. I think it would be amazing. It would be amazing. Hubba Bubba. What else? yeah. So these were actually based in reality, but we were a little more scared of them. What than we probably should have been. Acid rain. acid rain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't hear about acid rain anymore. We don't hear about acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer. And we don't hear about the hole in the ozone layer because we actually fixed it. We fixed a thing. We fixed it. Me n her Finally airspray. I was using a lot of aerosol deodorant. I went to roll on. Ban ultra roll on yeah, I went to putty. it went to putty. Instead of AquaNet. Yeah. Yeah. So you're welcome, world. how do we fix acid rain? Acid rain was pollution control. So they like had had more controls on w emissions. Yeah. And so So this is all coming back now. Yeah, probably. Probably. So that but there still is acid rain. okay. But Not as much. It's like a lot. But I but I when I was a kid I was like, Acid rain. Yeah. I'm gonna walk outside and And melt. Melt. I'll be burning. Like it'll land on me. Yeah. And I thought that too. You're a bit younger than me, so maybe some of this stuff was less scary for me. But yeah, no, I remember thinking acid rain, like it's gonna hurt. It's gonna burn all the wood the grass and yeah. And how come we never like We never asked people about this. We just were afraid of it. We just were we just kept it inside and went, Well, I guess I'm gonna sizzle into a puddle of goo. I don't know. I didn't go, Hey Dad, what's going on with this acid rain business? I was just like We're just like, I'm terrified. Yeah. We're just gonna die from this, I guess. Acid rain and quicksand. man. Nuclear war. I mean we went through the time of the Cold War, I was always worried about that. I was really worried about that. Yeah, that was like a I in the eighties. I was in high school and in the eighties is when the Cold War was really, really bad. And yeah. And you always just envisioned 'cause what was that, what's that Phil Collins or Genesis song? Spitting image with the spitting image puppets? Yeah. Where Ronald where it's the big red button. out. Land of confusion. Land of confusion. Nuclear war was something that was a very real my god. Yeah. Yep. Constantly worried about that. Not necessarily unrealistic. But no. Other things that we were disproportionately afraid of. What? As Gen X children. Razor blades in our Halloween candy. yeah. All the time. Was there ever that it's happened though. It's happened. I looked it up. It has happened. I wouldn't eat apples because of it. If I got apples for Halloween. We used to smash them. We used to smash them. Fuck you and your shit apple. Also, it's kinda shitty to give a kid an apple for Halloween. Yeah, like dentist giving toothbrushes. Come Go fuck yourself. Little har little harsh. Go fuck yourself. I mean shit out. They should have given candy because more clients. Right? What are they dumb? yeah, it was a thing. warnings about poison candy, pins, and razor blades became widespread in the seventies and eighties. genuine tampering cases have occurred, but the fear of strangers routinely putting razor blades into candy was greatly exaggerated. Yep. But I I actually don't remember my my parents never checked my candy. I don't maybe when I was tiny, but like 'cause I used to throw out the homemade stuff by candy apples and whatever else. Popcorn balls and there's homemade I hated wagon wheels too. Screw that. and cans of pop. No. Hello, Ontario. Kansas soda. Soda colour. But yeah, no, in all my years of trick or treating there was never a an in injurious object. No. No, me neither. Another thing that we were disproportionately afraid of as children. Growing up Gen X. Satanic messages. that was bull. I was never afraid of that. And how crazy it was in the eighties that Judas Priest and I think an Ozzy, Ozzy was taken a court over the song Suicide Solution because two fifteen year old boys or something were listening to that and then they blew their own brains out, unfortunately. And they said it was the song that made them do it. And they played it in court, and they said that there were backwards messages saying, Do it, do it, That's what they the the lawyer was saying. Imagine if those imagine if they would have found him guilty of that or Judas Priest for one of their songs. They were in they were in court. How crazy is that? It's like the witch trials in Salem back in the day. Yeah, definitely mass hysteria that that if you played certain records backwards you could hear hidden satanic messages. Like what the Led Zeppelin backwards was it would say praise Satan or something. The stairway to heaven. And both I don't know if this is true or not, but Dark Side of the Moon, if you play it, you start it the same time as you start Wizard of Oz, it gets incredibly synced up with the movie. Like what they're singing about is what's happening in the Wizard of Oz. okay. Allegedly. Might be not true, but we don't have time. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna sit there with my figure that out. did you have any personal fears that you had created that were not maybe as widespread? Like personal, like unfounded fears of something? Well, I thought my house was haunted, but it doesn't make sense. It's not because I was scared by media. Right. Well, I think ev you know, when you talk about haunted houses, I think in every neighborhood growing up. Yeah. Every kid would every neighborhood had a house where the kids were like, Don't go there. yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The woman who lives there is a witch. It's always a lady. It's always a lady. Yeah. And she was probably like thirty. Yeah, or maybe forty, maybe. But she had no kids. Am I that woman? you're definitely that woman in this hood. You're the witch. my god, I'm the witchy poo. I remember when I was a kid, there was this woman who had lived alone behind my friend Lori, and she was so nice to us and she was really cool. And I asked Lori, I'm like, How Do you think she would have been at that time? Because we thought she was so old. Right. And it was like, women don't live alone. what are you? She's not married. She has no kids. what's wrong with her? Right. And Lori was like, my God, she was probably 40. Right. Yep. That's so crazy to think. But yeah, every every neighborhood has a a house where they're like, Don't go, don't go to that house. It's scary. But my unfounded fear as a kid was, I don't even know where this came from. Someone must have said it to me and then never unsaid it to me, but I used to believe that if you got struck by lightning, you turned into a bear. Yeah. And I believed it. I just believed it. I just believed it. And no one told me otherwise. We talked about this, was it last night we talked about this? And you said not all bears were former people that had been struck by lightning, but all people struck by lightning became bears. Exactly. Okay. I wouldn't like look at a bear and go, that poor person got struck by lightning. I'd just be like, there's a bear. But could you tell the bear people from the bear bears? I don't think so. No. No. You wouldn't know. No. That could be Joey. Maybe an expert could, but I not definitely not me. But for sure I used to think that that happened. You know what I was afraid of? I was afraid of the razor blade boy. Who's the razor blade boy? The razor blade boy, and to this day I don't know if I hallucinated this or what. But I was in kindergarten in my elementary school in the schoolyard, and there was a kid who was After this moment became the razor blade boy to me. I think some other kid had pointed him out as being like, that guy's like bully or or mean or something. So I locked onto this guy and I remember watching this guy. And this is a memory that I have no idea if this is true or not. It sounds like it can't be, but in my head, it's perfect. Perfect memory of him doing this. I was watching him from across the schoolyard, frozen in terror. And the bell actually rang and I was frozen because I was watching him. And what he had done was he'd taken a razor blade and he was taking off the badge on his like athletic hockey jacket. There was like a crest from the local hockey, candiac hockey or something. And he was like with a razor blade. Taking it off. Und undoing the seams around it and then taking it off as I was like watching like this, like and then the bell rang, and I was like. And I couldn't like I knew everybody's like, come on. And I was like You were transfixed. I was transfixed by the razor blade boy and I was terrified of the razor blade boy after this. yeah. I would be. my god, yeah. The razor blade boy. The razor blade boy moniker. Yeah. The razor blade boy. Maybe he was putting those in apples at Halloween. Maybe. Maybe that's how he collected them. The razor blade boy is so dumb. It's not dumb. But when you're a kid, it's like huge. And all these like Unfounded fears. What did we say? So we said quicksand, satanic messages, killer bees, piranhas. Piranhas. well sharks, I guess, but we didn't say it. Yeah, sharks is also a another one. Meanwhile, when you think about our actual youth S Gen X, we were living actual actual dangerous things. just the way that we grew up. It was way scarier than anything. Like no helmets. my god, all that thing. No seat belts in the cars. Smoking in the cars with the windows in it. like did you ever you in the back of the station wagon? Just no seatbelt, just peeping. My ex wife, she used to sleep on the on the on the you know where the win sh the wind back window is? Yeah, she would lie on that and just go to sleep on that. we're gonna we're out of the house for like hours, come back when the street lights are on. There's no way to find your kid. There's like we have no tags or phones or unimaginable to my children that this is it'd be like, okay, it's nine, get out, and I just leave and I'd come back at suppertime, I'd eat. And then go out again. I'd come back at ten. Yeah. We're actually living the actual danger. And meanwhile we're afraid of quicksand and piranhas. Yeah, yeah. Well that weird guy, there was always a weird guy in the in the town that Yes. Was strange and everybody's like, That's the weird guy and we'd all be afraid of him, but not really kinda. Yeah. my god. Yeah. Sorry. We lived a very dangerous life actually. We're curious to know what was the bizarre danger that you were disproportionately afraid of as a kid. let us know in the comments and we'll all have a laugh at your expense. Sure, why not? Yeah, why not? Let's taunt them. Okay. just a shorty for ya. Happy Halloween, by the way, everybody. please drop a comment, share, like, subscribe, all the good stuff. And we'll see you next time on Feedbag. The bag of feed.