Fear

Mr. herewegoagain has instructed me to stop blogging about the wasps. "Enough already" might possibly have been his exact words.

SO, of course, I decided to write about everything else I am afraid of.

Perhaps I should start with what I am not scared of:

a) chocolate
b) 100 percent cotton
c) anything high fat and not cholesterol-free, or slightly alchoholic

Things that terrify me:

a) practically everything else.

Perfect daughter says I "live in fear". Well, coming from someone who jumps out of planes, bungee-jumps with the strap around her ankle, and eats almost- live (certainly raw) fish in Japanese restaurants, yeah, maybe I do.

Here's the thing....on the last season of "Survivor", Cirie was a contestant who confessed on her first day that she was "afraid of leaves". This got great laughs from the other survivors, as well as the audience. But I didn't laugh. No sirree Cirie, I was right there with you. Leaves ARE scary. They rustle. They blow around. They possibly are full of poison-ivy. They are certainly full of creepy, crawling bugs. Stinging bugs. Leaves ARE scary and I'm glad that someone out there has made it known. Now I'm not the only one who knows this most important fact.

I read once that there is a condition which is a "phobia of trees". I will admit, in my youth, I might have found that humorous. No longer. Have you SEEN a tree branch hit the ground in a windstorm? Scary, scary. Apparently, large eucalyptus trees in California have been known to topple over on unsuspecting pedestrians causing certain ( and embarrassing) death. It's just hard to say, "He was killed by a tree at First and Windcrest" without snickering. Personally, there is way too much to be afraid of in California to add large and hard-to-spell trees to the list, but there you have it.

I'm afraid to get dressed in my own home. I have to first look all over the shower stall for scorpions. Then after the shower, I have to shake out the towel. Then, shake it again, because I'm not kidding when I say, scorpions can hang on pretty tight. Then, shake out the clothes. Then lift up, peer into and shake out your shoes. After all that, you might be OK. Or, you MIGHT NOT. I once (this is a true story) put on my swim suit after shaking it. I wore it for a good fifteen minutes around the house, getting things together to go swimming. I picked up my towel (shook it) and headed out the door. On the way to the pool, I saw a weed I wanted to pick. I bent over and WHAM, the sting hit.

My children saw me scream, clutch my chest, scream louder, then turn from them and fling my swimsuit top OFF! (I did have the presence of mind to cover myself with my towel...otherwise, my kids might be scarred for life. Instead they tell this story at every family gathering with great glee). I do remember as I yanked off the tank top that I heard "crunch" and knew I had a scorpion in there. It had patiently waited at least fifteen minutes to sting me five times. I ran to the house. Perfect daughter ran after me, conscientiously stopping to murder the offending creature. She isn't called perfect daughter for nothing.

She found me huddled in my room muttering something like, "I will never swim again" over and over and over.

Yeah, now I'm afraid...very afraid...of my swimsuit.

I'm afraid of driving down my road. I'm afraid of deer leaping out from the heavily treed sides of the road...just trying to crash into the side of my car (they have succeeded three times...I'm quite friendly with the local body shop).

I'm afraid of TV. I'm afraid of flipping through channels, leaving the TV for five minutes and coming in to find out that sweet girl and rowdy son narrowly missed adding new and colorful language to their vocabulary.

I'm afraid of food. Not chocolate (see "a" above), but pizza, chili, late-night ice-cream and all those things that 20-somethings eat and enjoy and I eat and regret. I'm very, very afraid of garlic. I actually can't write about that.

I'm afraid of late-night phone calls. I'm afaid of early morning phone calls. I'm afraid of any call that begins with, "Um, we're all OK, but.....". Mr. herewegoagain is particularly good about being way too slow to get to the point that everyone and everything is OK and they just need to know where to find the mayonaise or whatever.

I'm afraid to fly. I've flown so many millions of miles in my globe-trotting childhood that I'm certain that my number is up and I need to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. That said, when perfect daughter and I fly together and I clutch her hands during take-off and landing (the statistically most likely time to die in a fiery crash), and pray loudly for GOD TO PROTECT US, she is very sweet and puts up with it and even wants to take more trips with me. ( Probably because I feed her better when I travel with her than when she is a starving student on her own in Europe).

I'm a little afaid of loving my chihuahua too much. There is something almost cartoonish about a large, middle-aged woman clutching a six-pound dog to her bosom and crooning to her. I need to stop that. I am actually afraid of looking stupid doing that, but I'm not really afraid of it in any other instance in my life. (As I have often hissed at my kids when they act up in public--nothing embarrasses me anymore.). Dog goofiness though...I might have to work on that.

There are so many things to be afraid of. I think because I am so afraid that I am actually very brave. I, unlike fearless people (and you know who you are!), have to swallow hard, put my chin up and sally forth. I have to put that swimsuit on again, knowing what can lurk within. I have to answer that phone in the morning. I have to get on the occasional plane. Life is really about facing those fears. I'm trying, I really am.

But, I still want to live in a very safe, very clean, very bug-free...box. You can visit me any time you like.