Topic #6: Scaredy Cats

Since these next two weeks seem like the most evil time of the year (Between Halloween and Friday the 13th -- not to mention midterms and progress reports and parent conferences) our blog topics should reflect that.  Let's start with fear.  As always, your response does not need to address all of the following questions, or even any of them, as long as you connect to the topic in some way.

What are you honestly afraid of (Including both rational worries and phobias)?  What makes those things scary to you?  How do you deal with them when/if you encounter them?
Where do you stand on the traditionally Halloweeny scary things -- meaning ghosts and goblins and witches, vampires and werewolves and zombies?  Do they -- or any other paranormal/supernatural things, like Bigfoot or the Chupacabra -- exist, or have they ever?  Are they scary?
What do you think of people's desire to be scared, by things like scary movies and haunted houses and deathtrap amusement park rides and the like?  Do any or all of those things scare you?  Do you enjoy being scared?  Why?


What am I afraid of.  Hmm.  I'm afraid of the usual things, dying, losing a loved one, failure.  I don't  think I fear the actual state of death, but I do fear dying itself; it is most likely that I will die alone, since I have no children and my wife has made me promise not to die first.  I'm not sure how I'll handle it, if I die of some slow disease or health problem.  I'm afraid of dying now, at a younger age, because I don't want to hurt my family that way.  I fear losing a loved one because I don't want to feel alone, and I don't want to feel regret or guilt.  My fear of failure comes in two forms: I worry that my writing, which has been the ultimate goal for almost all of my life (when I was six I wanted to be an astronaut, but otherwise it's always been the writing), is simply not good enough, or that the publishing industry has become too jaded and money-centric to give me a chance, and that either way, I will never accomplish what I dream of, and will have to stay in a job I don't like a whole lot, most of the time, for the next two to three decades.  I also fear failing in this job because I consider it to be very important, and even if I don't like it, I hate the thought of not doing it well, both for my own honor's sake and because I don't want to let my students down.  I have always been competent, good at what I do (Except for sports.  And dancing.  No coordination and I think too much.) and I don't want to lose that.

I have phobias about drowning, and moths.  Drowning because I fear suffocation, being unable to breathe, and because I got hit by a wave and sucked underwater at the beach when I was about four or five; moths because they look creepy, have large and heavy bodies for insects, they leave dust on things they touch with their wings, and they have a remarkable propensity for flying into my head whenever I'm outside at night.  Damn things.  I deal with these phobias by not going into the ocean (I'm fine in swimming pools and such, just not water with waves and currents), and by trying to avoid moths.  When moths do come near me at night -- the big ones, at least -- I freak out and run away.  Or I swat them with enough force to stun a raccoon, usually multiple times until there is nothing left but a smear, which I then wash away completely.

I am fairly dubious about the supernatural, never having seen anything even remotely paranormal, but I don't believe we know everything about the world and what's in it, so I could believe in pretty much anything.  I don't think those things -- ghosts and witches and vampires -- are very frightening, though.  They don't seem any worse to me than the human monsters and the very familiar natural enemies we have all around us, pestilence, famine, war, death, and so on, so on.

I can't stand scary things.  I don't go to haunted houses, don't really like scary movies, and absolutely hate deathtrap amusement park rides, rollercoasters and such.  I like scary movies when they are well done: I think The Shining (the original one with Jack Nicholson, of course) is a brilliant piece of work, as is Fallen with Denzel Washington and Se7en, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.  I used to watch horror movies like Saw and 28 Days Later, because I used to watch a lot of crap, but I stopped when I realized there were better things I could do with my time -- like watch grass grow or paint dry.  Though I have seen both of the movies I named, there.  Saw was boring and predictable, and 28 Days Later was depressing -- 28 Weeks Later was annoying.  But that's just me; I loved The Brave Little Toaster (and think that has one of the scariest images I've ever seen in an animated movie), so my taste is obviously suspect.

What about you?