List #1 Things that Scare Me

I have been away from the blog-o-sphere for more than two months now, and that is the longest hiatus I have taken since starting my blog over five years ago.  I still often have the thought, “I need to write about that!”, but with life being uncomfortably busy lately, and with my tired self choosing to do easy things like read Hawthorne or pin high calorie recipes on Pinterest, I have chosen the easier path of not posting. However, I think my little vaca has been long enough, and I am going to attempt to get back in the saddle again.  I thought maybe it would be easiest to start with lists.  Lists don’t require an excess of brainpower and will help me ease back into this writing thing.  So here we go:

10 Things that Scare Me

1.  Shredding cheese.  I know that shredding my own cheese from a big ol’ hunk is cheaper than buying it pre-shredded, and that the pre-done stuff often has additives, but doggone it, the whole shredding thing scares me to death.  I am so afraid that I’m not going to notice that the cheese is down to the absolute nub and then I will shred my fingers to the bone.  Does this freak anyone else out?

2.  Getting stuck in an elevator.  I have actually experienced this once and lived to tell about it, but the whole time, I was saying to myself, “You’re a big girl.  You can do this. You probably won’t die in here.” The elevator, which I was temporarily detained in, was in the city of Rome and I was in the 5x5 metal box with 9 other people.  It stopped between floors two and three because we had overloaded it apparently, and it was 110 degrees Fahrenheit inside.  Not only was I sweating profusely and praying out loud, I was on the verge of fainting—no joke. After trying to pry the doors open to get some cool air, we again pushed the buttons like madmen and miraculously, the static metal box began rising.  I think it was a miracle.  But if it happened again, I’m pretty sure I would die.

3.  Mean check-out people. When people are mean to me in stores, they make me want to cry and run away from them as fast as I can.

4.  Stepping on and off escalators. Is it just me or does it stress anyone else out when they have to get on or off an escalator?  What if I make the slightest misstep?  Will my pant leg get caught in the step that is disappearing?  And will people just trample on me as I lay on the floor?  Will my leg get shredded by the little teeth on the stair? I think my blood pressure rises about 50 points every time I am forced to ride on one of these contraptions.

5.  Revolving doors.  Is there really any need for these?  I always feel like I have to rush into the opening at just the right time—and when is that???—or I might get caught between the doors and become flat Tori.  And then school children will read a book about me and send me in an envelope to their friends and family telling them to take me with them on little journeys and take pictures of me.

6.  Cruise Control.  I know that I can press the brake and all if I feel like I am speeding along a little too speedily, but cruise control scares me because I think, in an emergency, I might forget which one is the gas and which one is the brake, ‘cause I’m not a real clear thinker in chaos.  So, when I do risk my life and choose to use the cruising’ control, I keep my foot right at the base of the brake pedal to increase the odds of my survival.

7.  Flying around in a fiberglass capsule in the sky.  My husband seems to think this is fun and so sometimes, just to be nice, or because I want to get somewhere fast, I acquiesce.  I have told myself just to relax during the flight and to see turbulence as just bumps in the “road”, but the road always looks really high up to me.  And, also, I am afraid of heights.

8.  My bald spot.  Seeing that I have only had like maybe 4 good hair days in my entire life, this one seems pretty reasonable.  I have a strange cowlick in the back of my hair that makes me appear to have a bald spot.  So, I spend inordinate amounts of time trying to make it appear that I am actually not bald and that I just have really bad hair.  This usually doesn’t work and I am always secretly hoping that I am too tall for you to see the top of my head with my bare scalp exposed. 

9.  Yeast.  Is this stuff truly alive?  And what happens if this live stuff gets into my live body as I put it into the bread I am baking?  Will it take over and make me look all muffin-toppy?

10. Numbers—but mostly ones with lots of zeros.  I have bad dreams of someone writing a really large number on the blackboard and asking me to tell everyone what it is.  I’m being completely serious.  My hands start to sweat when I have to figure out if something is in the thousands, or millions, or billions.  In my dreams, I usually say it wrong and everyone laughs at my stupidity.  Everyone, that is, except my cat, whom I hug while I am crying.  If you really love me, never ever ask me to read a large number out loud—especially if I have no animals nearby.

So that about covers it folks.  The only frightening thing that I neglected to include was going on roof tours on slanted roofs of cathedrals in Spain.  This situation is sure to send me into hysterics even if I have mentally prepared myself beforehand by saying, “You got this thing!” and “Ain’t nothing gonna bring me down”.  Even with my Rocky-like mental gymnastics, I would probably still hyperventilate near the gutter.  And as I am trying to be all like “I’m just taking in a bit of the scenery down here”, the tour guide might shout, “Are you OK, lady?” in Spanglish. And I might, while trembling, smile weakly and say “Yep. I’m fine” knowing full well that I am lying through my chattering teeth.  Of course, this is all hypothetical, but I think I would do well to avoid such things in the future.