i am clearly not the only neurotic one. yay!
"The Russian Federation considers it possible to use military force to guarantee its national security according to the following principles:
"The use of all forces and equipment at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, if it has to repel armed aggression if all other means of resolving the crisis have been exhausted or proved ineffective."
What did CBS News admit to doing in their coverage of the New Year's celebrations in Times Square?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
So, I copped to a weird fear that I have--I have plenty of others, some of which I mention in this entry but most of which I hold close inside, where you can't make fun of me for them--and encouraged y'all to 'fess up to one or two.
You've been waiting to get this off your chest, haven't you? The best part is, you're not alone. We've all got our little quirks.
Joanne writes:
I am afraid that slimy things will jump onto my back and take over my brain, whenever I have to go to my basement in the dark. This isn't as crazed as it sounds - I read Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters when I was twelve and ill with the flu, and there are scenes where slimy things (the puppet masters) jump onto people's backs and take over their brains. It made more of an impression than I'd like, which is why I won't read Stephen King. Damn good book though.
Well, I've never thought about this before but I sure will now. I'm seeing the downside of asking other people their fears.
Pam writes:
Sometimes late at night when I'm really good at spooking myself, electrical outlets look like little screaming faces.
My biggest fear is that one day I'll hear one of them screaming for help.
I don't have a fear like this, but I can understand it. And it's going to give me a whole new appreciation for things our imagination can impress upon us.
Matthew writes:
When I was a kid, every christmas eve my mom would take me and my sibs to a Candlelight service, on the assumption that while we were there Santa would load up the tree in advance. Then when we got back, we'd open them. Every year, I would be sitting there in church singing carols and staring into the candle flame wondering if our house was burning down. I always had this fear that on Christmas Eve my house would burn down while I was at church.
Now I don't even go to church, but every time I leave the house to go to a party or if I'm visiting relatives for the holidays, I always have this instinctive fear that there'll be nothing to go back to. Annoying as hell, but there it is.
When I read this the first time, I thought: his mom lighted candles at the house before leaving for Midnight Mass? No wonder he was afraid of the house burning down. Then I read it again and read the words that are actually there.
Yes, fear of not having a home to go back to is fairly common, I think. My mom used to worry incessantly about whether she turned the stove off, to the point where I've never wanted to use a stove simply so that I won't forget to turn it off. Leaving to go on a trip is simply agonizing--I have to check everything several times before I'm sure I'm ready to leave.
Greg writes:
I get very nervous driving on trestle bridges over water. I'm always afraid that I'm going to drive off the side. Only trestle bridges, only over water, and only when I'm driving (never as a passenger).
I assume that automotive fears must be pretty common. I mean, after all, you're guiding several tons of steel down a fairly tight path. And when it's constricted by something immutable--like the side of a bridge--I get hypnotized by the need to avoid doing anything wrong.
Elizabeth has a building fear and several transportation related fears:
I'm afraid that I'll be standing on a tall building or a cliff or something and will somehow be pulled over the edge.
I'm afraid that I'll somehow be pulled under the wheels of passing trains if I stand too close to them.
I'm afraid my car will shoot off the edge of long, high overpass type things, even though it's been explained to me why this can't happen.
In a sailboat, I'm afraid it will tip over even thought it's been explained to me why this is unlikely to happen.
When I jogged by the train tracks in Cupertino, I didn't fear passing rapists; I feared trains sneaking up on me and arriving at the narrowest part of the path--where there's nowhere for a poor lonely runner to go except the train track--at the same time I did. I don't think I saw one train the entire time I jogged, but I was always sure that one was going to show up at the worst possible time and I'd be flattened.
And who hasn't feared the whole drive-off-an-overpass thing? I mean, have you seen some of the skid marks that apparently go right over the edge of the highest, narrowest overpasses?
Elizabeth also writes about a friend of hers:
Once he was doing the laundry at a laundromat and wanted to leave it to go do something. He thought, what's the worst thing that could happen to the laundry if I leave it here unattended? Somebody could spit in it! Then he thought, oh, I'm being neurotic again. That could never happen. I'm gonna go get that Coke.
While he was away somebody stole a bunch of the clothes. That hadn't occurred to him.
Now that's funny.
I don't think I've been afraid of what people could do to my laundry at a laundromat--I've always gone straight to, "People are waiting to steal my fine, fine clothing."
Megan writes:
I've had a horrible fear of car washes since I was a little girl. I have no reason why but to this day I won't go through a car wash.
Well, I can understand this. Car washes are kind of frightening. If it's the drive-through kind (completely not seen in LA, by the way--they're all hand washes here), you're trapped in your car inside this machine that surrounds you with hot water and giant brushes. The hot wax sign alone is terrifying. What if the train pulling your car through broke down, and you were trapped there, with the water beating down on your car and the threat of hot wax flashing at you?
Jennifer writes:
I have this completely irrational fear of sitting down on the floor or ground with a whole group of people. I am afraid of getting my fingers stepped on if we all decided to stand up at the same time and I was too slow.
I also am afraid of getting my eye poked out by an umbrella. I therefore am loathe to use them, and get extremely nervous when I am walking down a sidewalk in the rain and it is full of people with umbrellas.
What, you didn't have your fingers stepped on in kindergarten when we all had to sit in a circle and there always that one kid who was still running around, not watching where he or she was going?
I think the whole umbrella thing is simply good sense and not a weird fear at all.
Aimee writes:
When I'm walking downtown, I worry that something will fall off a building and smash me flat. In cartoons it's usually a piano. I don't think it will be a piano. Maybe a big chunk of the building. Or workmen are up on the roof (not that I see any evidence of workmen, but they *might* be up there) and will drop a piece of heavy machinery on me.
But it'd be cool if it were a piano, right?
Actually, the one that keeps occurring to me is...have you ever heard the old question about what would happen if you drop a penny off the Empire State Building--would it dent the sidewalk or not? The one sure thing is that the penny would kill someone. I'm always convinced that some moron is just itching to try this out and my skull will get split apart by errant change.
Stephanie writes:
I fear hurting the feelings of inanimate objects. Currently plates. We have new crockery, stunning, simple, beautiful design, utterly right for showing off gourmet food. I use the old ones in case they feel rejected.
I have to admit I have no variation on this in my own life, which is why I find this to be a totally cool fear.
Susan writes:
My recurring weird fear is actually kind of dark and scary--I've always had this entirely irrational fear that I'm going to find my roommate hung from the showerhead. None of my roommates have ever been anything approaching suicidal, but fairly often I have this quick moment of dread when I enter the bathroom and don't already know that my roommate is somewhere else. It's entirely stupid and still won't go away.
Wow. That roommate thing is scary. I wonder if Susan got that from a movie or a story she heard when she was younger? That's right up there with my fear that anytime Darin is more than 5 minutes late in coming home I'm sure I'm going to get an in-person visit from a CHP officer. (Of course, this was not helped by the night that Zarko Draganic called from General Magic, claiming to be from the CHP, and telling me Darin had died in a crash.)
Mary Beth had a whole bunch of fears:
1. When I'm sitting in a theatre watching a movie I am afraid that someone will stab me from behind (I like to sit close to the front -- so the majority of psychokillers must be behind me). I have this thought every single time I am sitting in a theatre, but stadium seating DOES seem to help a little...
5. When I am in church I OFTEN feel the urge to laugh, yell, swear, etc. I am afraid that someday this will happen (perhaps this is a pretty common fear?).
6. This one is really weird: I am afraid that someday my parents will die and I'll be an orphan. The fact is, I'm 31 and they are already dead.
8. I am sometimes gripped with fear by the thought that maybe I am dead, but I just don't know it (hell, this was LONG before the Sixth Sense came out...). My husband no longer will indulge me in this discussion, as he is fully convinced that we are alive.
The fear of being already dead reminds me of a fear Darin told me one of his friends had: that when you go in for surgery, going under anethesia changes you and coming out you're not the same person you were going in. Of course, you can never prove this, since everything you remember are the memories of this new person, as opposed to the person you were.
I think the church one is pretty common. It's right up there with suppressing the urge to speak in a normal voice in a library. I mean, you probably can speak in a normal voice in a library; we've simply been inculcated with the need to whisper, which produces (in me, at any rate) the need to speak loudly. But politely.
And considering how many psychokillers there are lurking in movie theaters in just about every damn movie ever made, I think it's only wise to be on the alert while watching a film in a public. Or, hey, in your own living room.
Kathy writes:
1) That I'll accidently call my husband by my ex-boyfriend's name. I went out with my ex for seven years, and I've only known my husband for six years. So, actually, I expect this fear to wane as the years break even. Still, I fear that heat-of-the-moment thing (no, not that heat, but when I'm angry at him) in which "Matt" slips out instead of "Scot."
2) That after my baby is born in April I'll get addicted to crappy daytime tv while I'm home on maternity leave. If I ever, ever procrastinate any chore or obligation because I'm watching some damn game show, soap opera, or talk show, I will demand that someone shoot me. And then bludgeon me heartily for good measure.
No, really, someone else wrote this, not me. I hadn't thought much about the daytime TV thing before, since I don't watch TV as a time-filler now, but I sure will worry about this now.
As to calling my husband someone else's name...well, I actually have a cute story about that. I did it once, though not at The Absolute Wrong Time--we went to Santa Cruz for dinner and arrived plenty early, so we were walking around the beach. I called him "Damon"--the name of a gay male friend of mine, but the names are somewhat similar. I think Darin was a little startled at that: who is this Damon guy? I explained and he was mollified.
Anyhow, we were walking near some hotel that overlooks the ocean and Darin described how he stayed at that hotel on some business trip he was on while still in college or something. Completely out of the blue--which is totally unlike me--I said, "Wanna get a room?" Which we did. And we never did make it to that restaurant for dinner. I had such a great time with him that night, laughing and telling stories and just generally being silly (above and beyond the reasons most couples get hotel rooms), that I realized I was in love with him. I think I moved in about a week later.
I have never called Darin the wrong name since, strangely enough. I wonder if I did, would I be more spontaneous? I suppose there's no good way of testing this.
And since I've clearly moved off the topic of weird fears, I'll stop here.
There's a new journal, Sarah Femme, that I'm enjoying. I couldn't write about the stuff she writes about, but I'm glad she does. Once again, you are not alone.
The answer to yesterday's question: Harrod's, the famous British department store, lost its "royal warrant" (a distinction that means "people with titles for no better reason than they chose their parents well shop here") from the Duke of Edinburgh, also known as Prince Philip, husband to Queen Elizabeth.
Everyone involved insists that the loss of the royal warrant has everything to do with the fact that Philip no longer shops there, and nothing to do with how store owner Mohammed al-Fayed has called Philip a Nazi sympathizer and said that the Prince masterminded the plot by British security services to off al-Fayed's son, Dodi, and his girlfriend, Princess Diana. Al-Fayed challenged the Prince to sue him if the charges were untrue. Some are supposing that Philip simply withdrew his royal warrant instead. Way to go to make friends and influence people, Mohammed! You've got that British citizenship in the bag.
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com