What was the first event that disproved your childhood belief that the world is a safe place?

The day that I learned about death. It was the day my mother received the phone call from the police that my father had died in a car wreck. I was very young...I don't remember much else from my life around that time...probably younger than when most people start having long term recollection of the events in their lives. I don't remember much of anything about my dad at all I was so young when it happened...But I recall waking up from my bed and walking down the hallway into my mom and dads room in the afternoon. I remember I stopped in the doorway because I saw my mother sitting on the side of their bed, facing partially back to me with the afternoon sun shining softly through the white curtained bedroom window. She had her face in her hands and was sobbing softly. Some instinct in my tiny little brain somehow knew that something was very wrong because it was unimaginable to me that my mom could possibly cry. I only remember climbing up by her and trying to say to her the things she always said to me when I bumped my head or fell down and bumped my knee. Things like, "It's ok mommy. I'll kiss it better. What's wrong?" I didn't fathom at that moment what could possibly have happened. It wasn't until a couple years later when I was actually old enough to understand what had really happened that day that I pieced together the connection between why my dad was gone, why she was crying that day...it all just clicked one day. That my father was gone and he wasn't coming back. That my mom had been crying because that was the day she learned he had died. But that memory of finding my mom like that just in the moments after she had learned of my dads death has stayed with me my entire life and is among the very earliest things in my life I'm able to recall.

/r/AskReddit Thread