The end of the semester seems like the perfect time to reflect briefly on my personal relationship with the world. What better way to do this than via the things that freak me out?
1. Fear: Choking on food. Source: I remember getting freaked out by choking after learning about it and the Heimlich maneuver in school. I used to dream both about choking and about not being able to Heimlich someone who was choking.
2. Fear: brain tumor. Source: In my high school Thanatology course (i.e., death and dying), we watched a documentary about someone with terminal cancer. I remember that the film was about a woman who had some sort of brain cancer. She had lost all of her hair and the side of her skull had caved in. The caved in skull freaked me out.
3. Fear: lightning. Source: I now live in one of the most active lightning areas in the world. When Yidg and I were on campus for the first time (getting IDs and all that) there was a storm and a professor was struck dead. People are struck dead every year. And we get a lot of sudden thunderstorms. You should see the frantic sprint I will take from car to front door when it is storming.
4. Fear: murky bodies of water. Source: there are two from my formative years. The first was the movie Jaws. This has to do with not being able to see the things in the water that will take a big bite of flesh off my body. The second one (another source of nightmares like choking) was what seemed like endless warnings in the 70s about swimming in ponds or lakes and getting caught in the underwater plant life and drowning. So, I guess this is two fears: drowning and getting eaten by aquatic wildlife.
5. Fear: being an untalented scholar. Source: the disparity between getting heaps of praise and high expectations in my graduate program and the reality of high volume rejections/mysterious requirements of blind review journal publishing. From this dissonance between praise and rejection, I have developed a fear of writing.
updated to add:
6. Highschool fear: herpes (pre-AIDS). Those sex ed classes freaked me out about herpes. Because it was permanent and painful and you had to wear it on your face like a badge of shame (and that was the good kind of herpes).
About Me
- Michael LeVan
- "--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles . . ."
10 comments:
Wow. It's funny what different things people are afraid of. I have lots of fears -- but nothing on your list. I love thunder and lightning storms -- even when I'm caught out on the river in a sailboat, which is most certainly not an ideal situation. I love marshes and murky bodies of water.
I'm not afraid of brain tumors or writing either.
I am afraid of the dark. Afraid of heights. Afraid of death. And mostly, afraid that something bad will happen to one of my kids and I won't be able to stop it.
There was a story in today's paper about a guy who was just struck by lightning for a second time. Struck twice by lightning. Seriously, people get struck all the time here. It's as common as the flu. Plus, people get killed by alligators in the murky water. And we have sharks in the oceans. In fact, just last year and 14 year old boy was literally eaten by an alligator while taking a dip in a river. His friends saw him lifted out of the water and heard him yell that he didn't want to die. Then, a 20 year old woman was eaten while taking a swim in a lake. No thank you, I am not going in water that has stuff like that.
No alligators here ... or poisonous snakes. Murky water is much more fun when it can't hurt you.
My fear of heights is pretty irrational. I don't mind heights when there are lots of trees ... I have this idea that if I fell off a cliff, a tree would save me. But when I go hiking out west and there are no trees, I am terrified.
I am claustrophic as well. I get really nervouse when elevators get crowded ... this panicky feeling. Oh, I hate that.
I like your paternalistic view of nature! Also, it makes sense that you like to be outside so much when you are claustrophobic. (I have a friend who will never go in an elevator. She will climb 40 flights of stairs at a conference to attend a reception or an interview--and usually ask someone to accompany her since she really doesn't want to be alone in a stairwell.)
I think you have an extremely rational list of phobias here. Or maybe that's just because I share *all* of them. (Except I was afraid of AIDS, not herpes.)
Maybe these phobias were on a secret checklist to get you hired at a certain store...
Yeah, I avoid elevators when I can. But stairwells give me the creeps too. And parking garages. In movies, when you are in a stairwell or parking garage, there is usually about an 80 percent chance you are going to die a violent death.
Yes, jo(e), now I see how floating in marshes and walking in the woods can be such a relief. And yes, Scrib, vegetarian meditation capitalists have many a checklist!
I am utterly afraid of alligators so i guess I kinda fit under number 4 on the list. Its funny cause i still go tubing on lakes or rivers but the second i fall in the water i pretty much panic. Being in murky water just gives me the constant fear of an alligator grabbing me from underneath and dragging me under.As weird as it sounds, I used to have nightmares about alligaots attacking me every other night.♥ steffy
I am also terrified of swimming in murky water. I do beleive it was from seeing Jaws at a young age.
When im swimming in a lake or river i have the uncontrollable erge of telling myself "There is a shark that just opened its mouth and is clamping down on my leg.. right about.. NOW..NOW...NOW". and this happens for the entire time..
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