remember the things I used to believe in as a kid

i used to think that when everyone went to bed the TV just went black and white, like a fuzzy snow screen. i didn’t understand why TV would be on if there was no one awake up to watch it. Also i believed that the people at the television station could see back into our living room as we watched TV and that is how they got their ratings, by counting the people who watched. My mum said that it would be illegal to do that. kids are bizarre.

My parents used to scare me by telling me that Jenny Greenteeth lived in the creek behind our house. Jenny Greenteetch is supposedly a water demon, or a boggart in some stories, who lives in creeks and ponds and things like that and pulls unsuspecting children into the water, where she drowns and eats them. My parents, and i’m sure many other parents, told their kids this to keep them away from water. at first i thought they had made it up because i had never seen her, but then they showed me a picture of jenny greenteeth in a book called “Faeries” by brian froud (which is now one of my favourite ever). i was terrified. apparently its a lancashire folklore story, which is where my parents are from. but this BBC website says central europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2922176

point is, i believed this for years to come, and even believed it when my dad said she came into my closet at night. down by the water where i often went with my dad there was a dirty old sheet that was there for years, which lay on some rocks under this bridge and my dad said it was jenny’s. also, at the edge of the creek there was a huge mess of tree roots and branches which looked like a tiny beavers dam but very frightening, and my dad said that was her house or where she slept.

TERRIFIED.

i can’t find any pictures on the internet but i am looking at the book right now and she basically looks like a bony green balding, skeletony thing with long hair and long fingers. :(