Ever Been Shit-Scared ...

[Malthus]

... by something totally trivial, that made you laugh afterwards?

How about this one?

I was home, alone. I decided to have a shower, leaving the bathroom door open. The shower has a glass stall.

When I'm home alone, I usually turn off all the lights except for the room I'm in.

I'm getting it all steamy, when suddenly ... I see a head pass, slowly and silently, right across the dark bathroom doorway! In the dark, I couldn't see a body- just the head.

I was sure I was just seeing things. No-one could get in without making a noise, right? I go back to showering ... and the head passes, slowly and silently, the other way!

Okay, I was now shitting myself, nearly literally. I definitely saw it this time. WTF?

I turn off the shower and investigate, to find ... my son's "Spongebob" foil helium balloon, negected in his bedroom for months (and head-sized), had lost just enough gas to float at head-height ... 

[The Brain]

Jesus dude. I would have made stool for sure. Type 5 or 6.

[Syt]

 

[merithyn]

 

[MadImmortalMan]

Once I was with my gf in the basement of her parents' house doing teenage stuff. Suddenly we heard somebody coming down the stairs...clomp, clomp, clomp. We got our clothes on fast as lightning. My heart was pounding and I'm thinking her dad is gonna kick my ass. Then the door opens and it's her new kitten who wasn't quite big enough to walk down the stairs and had to leap off each stair to get to the next lower one, making a thud each time. Cat's name was Puck. Sneaky bastard.

[DGuller]

I shit my pants sometimes, but I never get scared.

[Malthus]

Once I was with my gf in the basement of her parents' house doing teenage stuff. Suddenly we heard somebody coming down the stairs...clomp, clomp, clomp. We got our clothes on fast as lightning. My heart was pounding and I'm thinking her dad is gonna kick my ass. Then the door opens and it's her new kitten who wasn't quite big enough to walk down the stairs and had to leap off each stair to get to the next lower one, making a thud each time. Cat's name was Puck. Sneaky bastard.

I can see the response to the cat now: "Puck ... off." 

[derspiess]

This is nowhere near shit-scared, but we had our house painted recently, and the doors are a darker color.  When I'm mowing the lawn out back, out of the corner of my eye the basement door always looks like it's wide open.  Bugs the crap out of me.  Hopefully I'll be used to it by next year.

[Viking]

A tie between being in a small boat in the middle of a herring school being attacked by killer whales and being on a university campus under siege by the Peoples Liberation Army.

[Malthus]

A tie between being in a small boat in the middle of a herring school being attacked by killer whales and being on a university campus under siege by the Peoples Liberation Army.

I dunno - do those count as "totally trivial" things you can laugh about afterwards ... ?   

[Viking]

A tie between being in a small boat in the middle of a herring school being attacked by killer whales and being on a university campus under siege by the Peoples Liberation Army.

I dunno - do those count as "totally trivial" things you can laugh about afterwards ... ?   

I dunno, they are parts of processes in which many herring and many chinese students were killed. They do, however, put everything else into context. It puts any fear response into it's proper context. The unknown doesn't scare me half as much as the known dangers I have seen.

[CountDeMoney]

This is nowhere near shit-scared, but we had our house painted recently, and the doors are a darker color.  When I'm mowing the lawn out back, out of the corner of my eye the basement door always looks like it's wide open.  Bugs the crap out of me.  Hopefully I'll be used to it by next year.

Paint that fucker white.  Problem solved.

[Liep]

My radiator once fell down from the wall and it gave off an incredible loud noise, scary in itself. But after rushing to turn off the water and burning myself in the process I tried to figure out why it fell.

To this day I don't know why as nothing had been torn from the wall on which it had been hanging for at least a decade.

[PDH]

On a morning watch near Drake's Bay in California I was alone at the wheel in the fog.  No real danger as it was dead calm too.  Still, the two humpback whales that suddenly surfaced and spouted about 10 yards behind me scared the crap out of me.

[crazy canuck]

A few years back I did a cross channel swim across porpoise bay*.  About mid channel a dark shape came up from underneath me.  Great, a killer whale has mistaken me for a seal!  As the dark shape came closer my heart stopped - this is it.  Turned out to be a large black seal, it was curious and swam with me for the next 30 minutes or so.

* just up from the Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver.