my irrational fear of ...

when i read today's topic, i wondered if anyone really finds his own fears to be irrational. of course, i wondered that aloud on facebook, and fred told me that she knows one of her fears is irrational - yet the fear is still strong enough to make her very nauseous. so there went that theory.

i have a fear of germs on my desk at work, specifically related to food. i'll eat at my desk, but if a piece of the food touches the desk it has to be thrown away. doesn't matter if it's a french fry or a skittle. once it's touched the desk, it gets trashed. water bottle caps, too. if they land top-side down, it's okay. but if they land so the open end is touching the desk (or floor, for that matter), they lid can't go back on the bottle. i mean, there's a lot of germs on a desk. so that's not irrational at all.

along those same lines, my silverware doesn't touch the table at a restaurant. and if a chip falls out of the chips & salsa basket onto the table? it gets set to the side, not to be eaten. this one is probably a bit more irrational - as i know the restaurants wash the tables between customers. i mean, i'm sitting at the restaurant watching the tables around me being washed. but still ... people are dirty.

and on the opposite end of those two fears - my food can touch my own counter, table, floor ... and it doesn't bother me at all. not that i'm licking caramel off the carpeting or anything, but still. i don't have the fear at the houses of people i know, either. yup, i'd eat a chip off your floor. unless it was covered in dog hair. :)

my fear of bats living in the attic is probably irrational. i've never seen a bat in the attic. i've never seen evidence of a bat in the attic. but somehow, i just know they're there. shifty li'l creatures.

i have a fear of non-operational warnings at railroad crossings. not enough of a fear to stop before crossing the tracks ... but enough that in that split second that i'm on the tracks, my heart skips a beat because what if the signal was broken and i'm now in harms way about to pummeled by an oncoming train that i somehow managed to not hear coming as i approached the tracks? that might be irrational. but trains kill people! so maybe not irrational?

i have a fear of needles. hypodermic needles, at least. when i was 17, i remember telling my mom that if the doctor wanted to draw blood, i didn't mind the lump in my throat so much & we could just ignore it. of course, he wanted to draw blood. and, of course, we didn't ignore it. that was the first time i'd ever had blood drawn. the draw went well, really. if i remember correctly they got the blood on the first try. (a feat that would not be repeated often.) but as i walked from the lab in the back of the clinic to the front desk, the hallway started getting dark & fuzzy. i remarked about that aloud and was promptly told to sit & put my head down while my mom paid. it helped. i didn't actually pass out. but i think the experience fueled the fear. for the next 8 years or so, once i made up my mind to go get blood work done, my body would start building up anxiety. first were the little pains in my arms & neck (neck, weird, right?) - as if a needle was jabbed in. then my extremities start getting cold. then i get light headed. all before i actually made it to the doctor's office. the past few years have been better. i don't have to lie down anymore as they draw the blood. and once the needle is in and the blood is flowing, i can glance over at the collection tube for a second or two. :) but that doesn't feel at all irrational. i mean, there's a piece of jagged metal puncturing my skin to suck out my life juice. that's worth a little fear.

i have a fear of lit cigarettes that are thrown from the vehicle in front of me. i just know that at that exact moment my car is going to spring even the tiniest of leaks from the gas line. and that lit cigarette is going to be just enough to send me into the air as a ball of flames. that could happen, right? okay, that one might border on irrational, too.

i have a fear of posting real information to a public blog. yet i'm sort of heading up this NaBloPoMo Daily Topic group ... now that's just plain crazy. :)

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