Afraid

need to be consumed rather quickly, so we rushed home from the airport, and within minutes of our arrival at home, Marge had pulled four of these ugly clawed monsters from the box, brandishing them like someone who’d just won a large check from the lottery.  They were creepy to look at, up close, without a piece of glass to separate me from them. The big pincher claws were taped with yellow tape, as if it were some kind of crime scene, and judging from the size of the claw, it could very well have committed murder and dismembered the corpse, yet the tape seemed to be a poor defense against the Power Of The Claw — if a lobster could tear flesh of a dead carcass, it could certainly break the yellow tape. Did I want to hold one, Marge asked.  I politely declined, though the voice in my head was not as polite.  I watched, horrified, as she dropped the live lobsters into the pot of boiling water, and was even more horrifeid by the scream that came from said pot. One is told that the scream is not one of pain, but, merely, the sound made by the air escaping the shell, and, that the lobster has no endocrine system, so it can feel no pain.  It occurs to me that a scream is nothing more than air leaving the body, so I am not convinced it feels nothing.  But, science says the lobster feels nothing.  To science I say: when some scientist is willing to have his endocrine system removed and be dropped in a pot of water to see if he feels no pain when being boiled to death, then, perhaps, I’ll believe science.  Until then, I’ll simply be afraid that a band of liberal, vegetarian, activist LGBT lobsters will unite and start dropping humans into pots of boiling water.

I’m afraid of horses.  When I was ten, a horse tried to kill itself and, apparently, didn’t care that I would drown along with him.  We’d gone to one of those horrible stables where you can rent horses by the hour, and, since it was in a touristy mountain town, they also offered group rides, down the path to the lake, and around the lake and back.  I can’t say that I was particularly thrilled from the beginning.  It just didn’t seem like something I’d enjoy, but, since the parents wanted to get rid of all the kids for awhile, I had little say in the matter.  We were duly saddled up, and were off down the path towards the lake.  As we reached the shore of the lake, the path turned to run parallel with the shoreline.  My horse did not care to make the turn. Rather, my horse wanted to go walking out in the water, taking slow, graceful steps, like Virginia Woolf walking towards her death.  The guide was calling at me to come back, and, I certainly would have come back if the horse would just turn around.  The horse wouldn’t.  The horse was intent on going further and further out into the water.  Step by step.  We were out far enough that my ten year old legs, hang over the sides of the demented horse were trailing in the water.  The guide was hollering at me to pull back on the reins, and, I most certainly was pulling as hard as my ten year old arms would pull.  Suddenly, the tour guide was there, grabbing the reins from my hands, and trying to pull the horse back out of the water.  The horse didn’t want to budge from it’s trek towards whatever Bright White Light it had its tiny little mind set on.  Finally, the guide was able to get the horse to stop and turn around, and we slowly made our way back to land.  I remember being afraid of what was going on, but, I didn’t get terrified, I didn’t cry or scream, but, once we got back on solid, dry land, and I was placed in front of the guide, on his horse, I started trembling.  A few years later, while visiting some family friends, we went down to see their horses.  I went to visit the horses every time I was there, trying to work through my fear.  The last time we’d been there, I’d actually gotten on the horse, and one of the older kids led the horse around the small pen.  This time, we were going to try for a ride.  While we were getting the horses ready, one of the horses from the other side of the fence leaned in and bit me on the side of my torso. Not a small bite, but, a bite big enough to bleed a great deal, and that took awhile to heal.  I’m convinced that the entire race of horses must view me as some sort of Anti-Christ that they need to destroy.  So, I avoid horses.

I’m afraid of grasshoppers.  Anything that can jump in through the window of a moving car is clearly possessed of some evil.

I’m afraid of being sick in public.  Sick as in hurling, ralphing, barfing.  One day, when I was in kindergarten, during the middle of class, while we were all sitting in a circle, one of my classmates suddenly leaned forward in his chair, and projectile vomited into the center of the circle.  He was already someone that kids made fun of, as he had a bit of a stammer.  Even in kindergarten, kids can be especially mean.  Once he hurled in class, any chance of him being popular was out of the question.  I can distinctly recall the laughter that floated from the mouths of several of my classmates. I was embarrassed to be part of a group of people who’d laugh at his humiliation. Over the next few months, I watched as he became more and more of an outsider in the class.  I wanted to make friends with him, but, I was cripplingly shy in those days, and didn’t know how to go about making friends.  Towards the end of the school year, he just vanished from class.  As the years went on, I realized that kids vanishing from class wasn’t an unusual occurrence.  There were two military bases, one Army, one Air Force, and transfers can happen fairly quickly, so, I suspect (and hope!) that he was a Military Brat, and, I hope that he found some friends along the way.  Even after all these years, I feel this sense of guilt that I didn’t reach out to him, but, I didn’t know how to reach out to anyone.  I didn’t make a friend until I was in second grade (and, as it turns out, he was a child of the military, and, he moved away at the end of the school year.)  So, I tell myself that it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t make friends with him, but I still feel like I should have.  Ever since that day, and learning, for the first time, just how mean people can be, I’ve had a deep fear of throwing up in a public place. I feel alone and feel as if I’m already enough of an outsider to provide amusement for others.

I’m afraid of being old.  I’m not the type to cling to my youth — my youth wasn’t worth clinging to, adulthood was much more interesting.  Having been raised by older parents, I’m well aware of the reality of aging.  Growing old is what we do.  I’m afraid of what life will be like once I become old.  I’ve seen too many people Be Old. The thought doesn’t fill me with much cheer.

I’m afraid of being boring.  Call me weird, ok.  I’m fine with that.  Call me a nerd, I’m fine with that too.  But boring?  That’s too dreadful to contemplate. Sure, you can think I’m boring because I prefer to read and write, rather than ski or race cars.  I’m ok that you think I’m just a couch potato.  What scares me is that I’ve got a boring personality, that I tell boring stories, that I tell boring jokes.  I suspect this is just the Need For Approval most of us have.

I’m afraid of making this essay too long.

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