The Blog Challenge continues.

8. Something you’re afraid of.

I was thinking about how in the grand scheme of things I don’t have any irrational fears. Like how hoarders have night terrors of moving companies  – you know – irrational stuff.

However, I am not fearless. A well placed spider will make me jump, but after that shock wears off I can crush the fucker with a super strong Kleenex.

That being said, the biggest ironic fear in my life is the act of travelling. Much like Jtree, I fear flying but love to travel (see #6). Know that I grew up in a decade when DC9 & 10s were falling out of the sky like rocks just because someone butted out a cigarette in their arm rest ashtray. Also all those Airport disaster movies had a big impact on my little mind. However, with that reasoning in place, I do not fear wandering eyes due to hours of repeated viewing of Karen Black trying to land a plane with one eye on the controls and the other on the landing strip.

There’s a scene in the movie Fight Club where Edward Norton dreams of being on a flight where the plane disintegrates all around him as it falls from the sky. This is what goes through my mind over and over again when I fly. Oh wait… here it is:

Weeks before I travel somewhere I usually have one or two really good nightmares about crashing.

To try to counter this fear I usually watch as much YouTube videos of planes crashing as I can ingest. To try to desensitize myself from the stupidity of my fear.

I’m also fearful of that ever changing grey area of human rights located in every airport. That’s right, I fear the Security Screening. I fear that at any given wrong answer, trip of the tongue, nervous twitch, you can be whisked away to a room and depending on some screener’s demeanour (or your own) you could never be seen again. Now I don’t behave like I’m on the Tower of Terror when I hit the custom officials, but I have been known to overshare. Like telling one official that I was headed for Disney and I was hoping my vacation would be magical. His response was to hold my gaze for a solid 10 seconds, change his expression from business-like to something that looked like I just confessed to a jello in sock fetish and decide then and there I was harmless. Wordlessly he stamped my passport and waved me on.

Grumpy guss.