Poking my Feet

There are a lot of things that I tend to think define me, but when held up to scrutiny, I realize that I am no such thing. For instance-brave. Brave used to be my thing when I was little. I didn't cry when I got shots, I ran through fields with no shoes, I climbed high up in trees, dove off high dives, and I was the one who cleaned up the dead mouse my sister's once found under our bed.

See. You probably read through those and thought, "um, that isn't necessarily what I would call brave." But in my mind, at the time, I totally thought I was brave.

I had my fears, too, and thinking about what I actually use to fear is more interesting to me than the things I thought made me brave. While I had the normal fears- someone breaking into the house, dying of cancer, losing a parent, the story with the babysitter and the caller ("go check the children")- I also had a bunch of just plain weird fears, that demonstrate the lengths of my imagination.

For instance, when I was little I watched an Alien show, where aliens were popping out of people's stomachs and all that good stuff. The resulting ramification of my violating the MPAA's rating recommendations is that I had a fear of the bathtub drain after this. Yeah, I know that doesn't make any sense, but I wouldn't keep my feet by it when I was in the bathtub for the off chance that an alien might pop up out of it. I kept this fear for years. Darn aliens.

The next fear I had wasn't necessarily something that I thought of constantly or worried much about. But occasionally when I would think about it I would work myself up. It's one I have mentioned in my blog before. I never wore shoes outside during the summer time growing up. Somehow I got the notion in my mind, that what if there was a little world of people who live underneath us- our ground is their ceiling? And what if they are after us and are trying to poke our feet with needles? This incredibly sane reasoning would make me hop around on my tippy toes- you know, just in case.

And lastly, sometimes I got to wondering if I was the only real person and that everyone surrounding me was really robots. Seriously, had this thought a couple of times.

Today, I still have some of the same fears- someone breaking in the house, dying of cancer, losing a parent, the story with the babysitter and the caller ("go check the children")- but I have replaced all the irrational ones with the all too real ones of my children being harmed in any way. I guess I shouldn't say I have replaced all the irrational ones. I have gained some new ones as I have grown up- like the fear of calling people on the phone. I still have a little crazy in me.