I consider myself a man of reasonable fears and limitations. I am not a worrywart, or unduly anxious about what dangers might lurk ahead, nor do I extrapolate benign situations in my head until they become a heart-pounding peril worthy of Indiana Jones. I am mostly pragmatic (save for my admittedly irrational phobia of heights), and consider those things of which I am afraid to be honest, potential threats to my safety.
Take, for example, my fear of death. It doesn�t keep me up at night, but I think that most healthy people have an aversion to the actual cessation of their very existence. I am not worried that every doorknob I tough might happen to be coated with deadly HANTA virus, but I�m careful to wash my hands before I eat. My fear of heights is irrational only in that it doesn�t really care what capacity I�m experiencing said heights in before it tosses all my adrenal glands into high gear. But it�s also kept my genetic ancestry in business by urging all my predecessors to "Stay away from the edge of the mountain!". There are a lot of people who don�t exist today because their great great great grandsomething didn�t get vertigo from peeking over the edge of a cliff.
Anyway, the justification of my various and sundry little precautions (I get nervous around big, un-neutered pit bull, no matter how many times their owners say, "Oh, he�s just like a big baby," because I�ve read about enough 4-year olds getting mauled to death in their own front yards by "big babies" to keep me nervous, thanks) notwithstanding, I have recently discovered a factor that throws the proverbial monkey wrench in the machinery of my reasoning.
One evening this past weekend, I was crossing under a tree on my way back to the apartment, when I smacked into something. It was too dark to see, but it felt like a giant, hairy pi�ata, and I literally heard the sound of something striking against my shoulder (which is probably totally bruised now, you guys). Then, some kind of rope coiled itself around my head and face. I immediately recognized this rope as spider webbing, and started to freak out. I mean, like, in a mature, manly way, of course.
I did the Get It Off Me dance, checking myself desperately for arachnids and clawing in desperation at the cobwebs festooning my hair, all the while trying to look "cool", because there were people passing by and I was starting to look like that guy on the corner with the cardboard sign whom everyone tries to avoid for fear of being called out as the Whore of Satan or some such. I darted inside the building, and as soon as I was in the safety of my bathroom, with the lights on, I did a thorough body search. No spiders crawling on my person, no feathery white cocoon forming around my head�and that�s when I saw it.
Dangling from my shorts was the biggest, ugliest, crunchiest, hairiest spider I have ever seen in my entire life. This thing looked like a hand with eight fingers. It was huge and furry, with tusks like a woolly mammoth, and it was sloooowly lowering itself to my bathroom floor on a strand of cobweb as thick around as a number two pencil. I immediately did was any rational human being would do in this situation: I screamed like a little girl and started running around the apartment, trying to shake it loose. I mean, the worst part is that of course it was totally tethered to me, so it was like watching a dog trying to run away from its own tail.
After about two and a half minutes of unbridled panic, a chaotic and modern dance routine worthy of Stomp, and the most undignified hooting and hollering I�ve ever emitted in my adult life, it finally broke free and landed on the ground with a thud. Still screaming (this time into the phone, since KillerWorkout was stupid enough to answer), I shepherded the mutant, alien, junkie spider out the door with a sheet of cardboard, and slammed it shut behind him. I swear, if I�d tried to step on it, he would have bitten clean through my shoe. Plus, I wasn�t particularly interested in what would have ended up being a half-hour clean-up session.
So anyway, despite the fact that I pride myself on the rational basis for my various fears, it turns out that when I�m caught unprepared, I�m actually a complete basket case. All I know is that I now have a completely irrational phobia of trees, and I�m proud of it.
Someone Got Here By Searching For: cursor gets stuck I�m Watching: North Shore, and frankly, they�d better start giving Shannen Doherty more to do, or I�m going to get a little upset. I�m Done Reading: Good Omens, which was hysterical, and now I have to pick a new book�