[Kitsa]

My mom was in a school bus accident as a kid and still remembers the person in the other car (quite dead) half in and half out their windshield, bloody, brains everywhere.

She also had a kid in her Junior High commit suicide by drinking random chemicals in the chemistry lab.

I don't know if you'd count this as traumatic, but it was my first run-in with a really bitchy girl. My parents had just moved and I'd left the only home, friends, and family I'd ever known for strangers, cold and hostility 12 hours away. This was early 80s. My mom told me if I was lonely to go play on the front step of the apartment and maybe some kids would come over.

So I took my Return of the Jedi action figures and went down to the front to start building treehouses for the ewoks (favorite activity back then). Two little girls a little older than me came over and started talking to me. I was lonely-stupid and didn't detect the bitchiness, I thought they wanted to be my friends.

We started talking about jelly bracelets, which were the big thing at the time, and I had tons of them. They said they'd go get theirs, told me to get mine, and we'd come back and trade some. I was all excited and ran back up to the apartment for my bracelets, telling Mom I'd met two other girls. Then I ran back down and waited. And waited. And waited.

Yeah, long story short, they never made an "appearance", but I heard giggling in the bushes on the other side of the street. At that point I fucking gave up and I think I've hated people ever since.