You have no idea what I quoted in the title? Well, if you'd shown me the quote a week ago, I wouldn't have known either. But after waking up from a nightmare that reminded me way too much of a Courage the Cowardly Dog episode, I did some googling and BAM. Childhood trauma relived.

"Adopt the slay"
Let's go back to the start of this milennium. Some of you weren't even born by then, but I was four years old and I'd just discovered Cartoon Network. One of my favorite shows was Courage the Cowardly Dog. Basically it's a show about a purplish dog who has all kind of disturbing... uhm... 'adventures'. Surf the web and you'll find tons of people with traumas caused by this show. Four year old me, however, loved it. I alwayd laughed way too hard and I can't remember being scared by an episode. Until I saw the episode called 'King Ramses Curse'...

King Ramses was by far the scariest thing I'd ever seen in the whole four years of my life. When Courage finds an Ancient Egyptian slab, the mummy of King Ramses comes to get it back. Courage's owners don't want to give it back since it's worth a lot of money and so the mummy stays in front of the house. He sends three curses, none of which I can remember. I've put a lot of the memories of this episode far, far away.
When the episode was over, I was scared to death. I didn't dare look out the window for weeks, out of fear I'd see King Ramses there. I was four, so I didn't know I'd had to steal the slab for Ramses to show up at my house.
Night after night I thought I heard King Ramses ask for his slab. "Adopt the slay, adopt the slay" I heard in my mind just before I fell asleep. I saw the episode in Dutch and my freaked out brain turned the Dutch 'Geef op de steen' ('Give up the stone') into the English 'Adopt the slay'. I didn't know much English yet, but I did know what 'to adopt' meant and I assumed that by saying 'the slay', King Ramses was referring to himself... My kindergarten brain immediately jumped to the next conclusion: if I'd ever look out of the window and see King Ramses, he'd see it as me adopting him and would grant himself entrance to my house. Do whatever he wanted to do with me...
I was traumatized.

Fourteen years later
I'm eighteen years old. I'm in college. I watch Awkward and Catfish on MTV. I hadn't thought of Courage the Cowardly Dog in years. Okay, apart from those times when I was 6, 8, 11, 12 and 14 when I had nightmares about 'The Slay' as I'd started calling him. But the last nightmare was years ago.
Until this week. It wasn't exactly Ramses standing in front of my house. But basically it came down to a creature keeping an eye one me, waiting for me to open the door and let him in to end my life.
It needed to stop. Fourteen years have passed, enough is enough. So I decided to face my fear and watch the episode again, hoping it'd go better than the time I tried watching it when I was five (I ran away every time Ramses was on screen back then). Oh, and to shake things up a little, I'm live-blogging the results of this little face-your-fears-experiment.

King Ramses' Curse
10.03 am Huh, these episodes are only ten minutes long. I always thought they lasted like 40 minutes.
10.04 am Oh God, that opening pic still sends shivers down my spine
10.05 am Jesus Christ, my phone just went off and I think I had a tiny heart attack... This was not a good idea. I'm not even 3 minutes in!
10.05 am I'm scared. It's only Ramses shadow but I'm scared. It's also not helping that a storm is coming up outside
10.05 am Wait, Courage could talk? I can't remember that at all XD
10.06 am Okay, so can someone tell me why the F he's digging a hole next to the water pump. Did he actually see the slab being burried there or is this just random plot hole stuff?
10.11 am Now I remember why I liked this show. It's actually very funny :P
10.12 am Enter King Ramses. I can't remember what the Dutch voice sounded like, but this voice is not that scary.
10.14 am First curse has me laughing out loud
10.15 am What was my problem with King Ramses? He just sounds like a whiny kid to me now.
10.17 am Oooh I remember this part! Though I used to think it was a tornado and not locusts
10.20 am That was it? All of it? You've got to be kidding me. This is what I've been afraid for for fourteen years?! Come on...

One day later
I decided to sleep a night, so how it'd go with nightmares and stuff. Conclusion: King Ramses is not that scary. Thinking about it more, I don't understand why I was so scared. Probably because my brain developed more footage of him than there actually was in the episode. And my home-made King Ramses scenes were scarier than what I saw yesterday.
One more thing: what did King Ramses say in Dutch? I can't find it anywhere on the internet, but it definitely wasn't 'adopt the slay'...

To be really honest with you, I really get why there are still many people out there going on about Courage the Cowardly Dod. It's pushing the limits on what can and can't be shown in a series for kids and... it sure is creepy as hell that the voice actor who did 'Return the slab' remains unknown...

Stay Awesome!