Nothing To Fear

Our fears are often uniquely personal, some grounded, some irrational, and people can’t talk us out of them.    What scares me may actually amuse or even bore you.  

Between my sister and me, we fear much of the natural world: tornadoes, black ice, salamanders, toads and inch worms.

I don’t like heights or confined spaces, so flying poses a problem.  I often joke that it wouldn’t be so bad if we could just go a little lower.  Why can’t the aircraft hover at a comfortable 30 feet? With the windows open?

My sister once waited in her car in the driveway, for a glassy-eyed chameleon to leave her front stoop.   We kidded her, still in her work uniform, paralyzed by a tiny reptile minding its own business on her doorstep.  I tried to explain that if she just opened the car door, the thing would dart away.  But, you can’t always talk someone out of fear.

And no one was talking me out of my fear of car washes, thanks to an old car with a back window that didn’t close completely.  During a car wash, sudsy water gushed in.  Naturally, someone seated back there could easily develop a fear of car washes.  Or, more accurately, a fear of drowning by gushing, foamy water, or of suffocating by a large whirring brush.

Elevators present another issue for me:  My father introduced us to New Orleans by bringing us up the outside of a tall building, in a glass elevator, defying both logic and my survival instinct.  My body told me repeatedly to get out of the transparent box that was creeping up the side of a building.  So I shrunk in the corner and screamed, while he pointed out various landmarks and historical sights.  In the other corner, my sister had her own problems to sort through, immobilized by a nearby spider.  He wasn’t talking us out of anything.  Not even the elevator.

Once, while driving in the Midwest during torrential rains and thunderstorms, my worst fear spun into town.  Barreling west on the interstate, I tracked an impending tornado on the radio.  Like a misguided storm chaser, wrinkled map clutched in one hand, steering wheel gripped in the other, I tried to outrun the twister that was heading right at us from the South, temporarily forgetting my fear of hydroplaning and leaking backseat windows.  I couldn’t pull over, due to my other fear of being slammed from behind by an eighteen-wheeler.   

Desperate for reassurance, I tried to wake my sleeping sister who could barely open her eyes as she scolded me for being too loud.  I wanted to tell her there was a salamander on the dashboard. 

My baby sister, the one who couldn’t look a toad in the eye, had yawned through my biggest fear, essentially talking me out if it.  Her calm during my storm was just what I needed to gain some perspective. 

And to realize that I would have been safer on an airplane.