Stuff I dreamed about, worried over, and hoped for when I was very young

1. my closet. it had a trap door. i wondered where it led. i used to think about what to hide there, but could never come up with anything dangerous/illegal enough to worthy of such a space...
   
2. my grandparents. my mother told me they lived over my bed and could see everything i did. Were they really watching me?
   
3. the grandfather clock... my mother told me that it stopped working the day her father died. I realize now that was a lie.
4. the house on Oakridge Ave. I used to dream over and over again about the house in which I was growing up... Always, a winding stairway that lead up and up and up. I'm being chased. And then I reach the attic and the stairway opens at the back of the house. and it is rotten, fallen apart, dark and covered with mold. And I fall and fall and fall into the pit of the earth. some places have a personality, a sense of self of their very own. the house of my childhood is, without a doubt, one of these
   
5. Is it True??? I spent a great deal of my childhood figuring out whether or not what my mother had just told me was true. For example, consider the following stories from the eyes of a five year old:
1. Did a change in temperature break out the windows of the Cadillac last night and some very nice people came and fixed it during the night?
2. Did a black man attack my mother at a stop light? Did she throw her shoes at him?
3. Did the star of the 3:00 soap opera really ask my mother for her necklace that morning so that she could wear it on today's show?
6. and so on and on and on....