In a recent meeting, a vendor was speaking to a large group of people with mixed technical experience. They mentioned “blob storage” and I felt compelled to interject for the benefit of those folks who’d never heard the term that despite sounding like a warehouse for Hollywood 1950s B-movie props, blob storage was, for our purposes, a kind of file system. This drew a few laughs. It also dredged up an ancient memory, something from nearly half a century past. Something about floating blobs.

I couldn’t have been more than five years old. My bedroom was at the end of what seemed to me like an enormously long hallway. Looking back, the hallway couldn’t possibly have been that long, but I was small, and my perceptions of the world not fully evolved. Plus, it was early in the morning, and I had just woken up. 

It was early on a Saturday morning. I know this because on Saturdays, I would go into the family room on the other side of the house and watch Saturday morning cartoons. This was the mystery and spin-off era of Hanna-Barbera and they dominated Saturday morning. One big exception, I think, was The Bugs Bunny Road-Runner Show. The TV, at the time, sat in the northwest corner of the family room. The floor was blue tiles. There was a couch in front of the front windows. I think I just sat on the floor.

To get from my bedroom to the family room was a bit of a hike for a youngster early in the morning. I’d proceed from my room down this long hallway into the living room. There was a TV here and a very maroon and possibly velvet couch. To the left was an opening that led toward the front door. Continuing straight led to the dining room. I’d turn left and pass through the dining room then through the kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen was the family room.

On this particular morning, I awoke bleary-eyed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and eager to watch cartoons. The house was silent; in my memory I wore footie pajamas and took a few steps into the hallway. For some reason, I turned back to look at my bedroom—and that’s when I saw it: a big blob floating in my vision. It startled me. I took a step back and the blob seemed to follow me. I took a few more careful steps and then broke into a run. Just before I turned left toward the kitchen, I glanced over my shoulder and that blob was still there. It was chasing me!

By the time I made it into the family room, breathless and no doubt hiding behind something, the blob was gone. The TV was there. It was time for cartoons, and I turned my attention to the important business of TV-watching.

At some point, much later, I realized what had happened. Rubbing my eyes, caused some sort of distortion which made me see the blob. It followed me because the distortion was in my eye—like floaters are today. Of course, I knew none of this at the time. It seems amusing now, in retrospect, but I still remember the feeling of terror I had during the attack of the floating blob.

Perhaps because of that terror, I have always remembered this incident, and it has made me extra sensitive to my own kids’ fears of the unknown and unexplained when they were young.