January 10, 2017 | My advice? Face fears when you must. Shelve 'em when you can. Never sit outside at twilight next to a woman sporting a bouffant. Nothing good can come of it.
I have never received counseling for my fears, but I understand if I had, many counselors would've delved into my childhood, placing blame for my deep-seated fears on my parents. I would never want to do that because they did their best. I came along ten years after their last child. Mom was five months into the pregnancy when she went to the doctor, during potato harvest, to find out why she couldn't shake the flu. Her doctor told her it wasn't going to be easy to shake since it wasn't the flu. It was me.
I can imagine the shock that would accompany that news for a 38-year-old mother of four who hadn't given birth for ten years. Luckily, I had the best parents in the world. The words faithful, generous, and hard-working only began to describe them, along with the words long-suffering and exhausted. They were plain tired by the time they raised me. I would never, in a million years, blame them, but however it occurred, I was a neurotic kid. I was afraid of everything. Well, maybe not everything, but almost. Here's a mere smattering, in no particular order:
Fear of the dentist. When I was 7, I locked myself in the car in the dentist's parking lot and looked on belligerently while my mother pounded on the window.
Fear of water. Even at a very young age, I realized there were way too many orifices in my head where water could infiltrate my brain. I wasn't about to submerge my head willingly. My mother forced me to take swimming lessons every single summer to counteract this fear. When I reached the swimming level that included diving, she snuck up behind me and pushed me into the pool. I didn't speak to her for a week.
Fear of rodents. I was in the barn with Dad when a mouse ran up his pant leg. He caught it from the outside and used his pocket knife to cut the fabric away. Dad had claw marks on his thigh. All sightings since this moment have prompted episodes of screaming and standing atop furniture. The rodent gets upset, too.
Fear of public speaking. I didn't like it when people looked at me in general, but a two-and-a-half-minute Primary talk (I'm not sure why the time frame was so specific) had to be memorized so I wouldn't get to the pulpit and draw a blank. My dear mom signed me up to perform Twas the Night Before Christmas for our church's Christmas party. It took me all month to memorize it. When I got up to perform, I was so nervous, verbal garbage spewed from my mouth. It was a crazy mashup of lines from the Who's down in Whoville and Frosty the Snowman. It gave new meaning to "there arose such a clatter."
Fear of falling out of a roller coaster. Most kids loved them. I thought it seemed unwise to spend money on an obvious death trap. It happens. I'd seen it on the news.
Fear of the basement. Our basement was unfinished, and very old, although the photo to the right is admittedly much worse than the basement of my youth. The Fruit Room was located in the far corner of the basement. I had to pass the coal furnace on my way to the Fruit Room. It huffed. It groaned. It glowed red like a portal straight down to the bowels of Hell. I knew, with all certainty, that when I retrieved my mother's requested home-canned item from the Fruit Room, the furnace would send its demons to chase me all the way up the stairs. I took them two at a time. Sometimes, three.
Fear of clowns. My grandmother crafted a framed set of two-dimensional lucite clown portraits for me. She had painstakingly molded each individual piece in its corresponding lucite. (Think--giant lucite grape clusters on 1960's coffee tables). They stared at me, glowing, in the darkness of my room, with their solid white eyes and black pupils. I took them down and slid them behind my dresser. My mom couldn't figure out how they'd fallen there. She'd hang them back up. I'd take them down. It went on for three weeks before I confessed. I didn't want her to think the house was haunted. To be honest, I didn't even like knowing they were behind the dresser. We compromised. She hid them where I would never find them, but we hung them back up whenever Grandma visited. This photo isn't the the same thing, but his eyes are eerily similar.
Fear of school bus bullies. I grew up in the country. It took an hour to get to school--longer if the weather was bad. There was a lot of time to kill, and by kill, I mean pulling ponytails, propelling spit wads, calling names, making up inappropriate limericks, etc. Idle farm kids could be mean.
Fear of fear. I once clobbered a spook alley employee who jumped out at me. He was only doing his job. I socked him right in the face. I was as surprised as he was. No more spook alleys. No more scary movies. It's safer for everyone that way.
Fear of aliens/Satan worshipers. When I was ten or eleven, the nightly news was filled with reports of cattle found dead in the fields, mutilated. There was talk of alien experimentation. There was talk of satanic cult rituals. Seriously. I didn't need to be neurotic for this to bother me. I lived on a farm. In the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by fields of cattle. Cue the Twilight Zone music.
Fear of the dark. This is really a no-brainer. Creepy clowns in my bedroom. A possessed furnace in the basement. Aliens and Satan worshipers right outside the door - who would be so stupid as to sleep in the dark? Not me. Lights on, please. And keep 'em on. No turning them off as soon as I go to sleep.
And last, but not least, a fear of bats. (It's not really my last fear. There are dozens more, but listing them all might cause someone to show up at my door with a straight jacket, so I'm stopping the list after this one.)
Our family didn't get out much, tethered to the farm and the dairy cows with their twice-a-day milking habit, which meant it was a big deal when we accepted an invitation from a neighboring family to visit a hot spring in the hills above our farmland for a day of swimming and picnicking. It was the first social event that wasn't a family reunion or a church function that I could remember, but, you know, I was only six years old.
On a lovely end-of-summer day, right before harvest when we'd be far too busy for something as frivolous as a picnic, we packed up the car and drove into the hills to meet the other family - my parents' friends. They didn't have any kids my age. Everyone else was older, and definitely more athletic than I, as they spent the day swimming in the deep end before retiring to the meadow for a game of baseball. I stuck to the shallow end, by myself, with my head safely above water, and when it was time for baseball, I had no urge to try keeping up with the adults, so I did what was comfortable. I sat at the picnic table with my mom and her friend and listened to their conversation. Was that weird behavior for a normal six-year-old? Maybe. But it was normal behavior for a weird six-year-old. I tagged along, listened, and became the old soul my mom said I was.
So, there I sat, waiting for the baseball game to end so we could go home and milk the waiting cows. The meadow was nestled between hills, and the shadows grew long. I sat next to Carma, my mother's friend, and Mom sat across from us. I was explaining to them that I liked raisins, and I liked broccoli, but it was wrong to put them together in a salad. They were laughing at the mound of soggy raisins piled up on my paper plate.
It was 1971. Big hair was all the rage in Idaho. The rest of the country (at least my California cousins) had moved on to feathery Charlie's Angel's hairdos, but in Idaho, the bouffant was still going strong - or high. My older sister, who was 17 years older, wasn't at the picnic, but she had the most beautiful big hair I'd ever seen, carefully molded by sleeping in orange juice cans as curlers and then ratted, teased, and sprayed. A work of art. My mom and her friend, Carma, had big hair, too. It wasn't molded as carefully as my sister's, but still set in curlers and ratted into submission. At six, I admired the look but hadn't graduated from ponytails. Picnic hairstyles seem an unimportant detail, but what came next solidifies the point.
I was in the midst of asking how someone thought to mix raisins and broccoli, when, from out of nowhere, a bat, in its twilight departure from its cave, flew overhead, surveying the meadow. I do not know what drew it to our picnic. The raisin mound? The smell of Aqua Net? We will never know its motivation. What I do know, is that the bat was driven to swoop earthward directly above us, stretch its little clawed feet, and snag itself in Carma's carefully ratted bouffant. It was trapped, snared, like every detail etched upon my six-year-old psyche.
I looked up from the picnic bench, aghast. I'd never seen a bat in real life. It was flapping desperately, working its way deeper into Carma's ratted hair, screeching with all its horrific might. Carma was also flapping and screeching with all her horrific might. It was the most terrifying sight I'd ever beheld. The baseball players ran to see what all the commotion was about. My mother ran around the table, trying to shoo the bat away. I didn't try to shoo. I left shooing to the adults. I got away from Carma as fast as my little legs would carry me, certain its colony of fellow bats was preparing a second air raid. I ran to the car with my hands over my hair, determined not to be the next victim.
Since this occurrence, I have aged considerably. I have matured. I have learned how to live life as a Functional Fraidy Cat (not a clinical term.) Here's my possibly batty way of looking at the problem as the adult I am today: If a fear is something that causes me to think twice, or proceed with caution, then I embrace it as part of my genetic propensity for survival and place it on my Shelf of Acceptance. Fine. Bats scare me. Whatever. If harboring a fear is unhealthy in some way, then it is one I must face. It gets face time. The stare-down. Take the dentist incident as an example. Do I like going to the dentist? No. Do I want gum disease and dentures? No. So, I stare it down. I swallow the fear, and I go to the dentist.
Some fears aren't worth the validation of face time. I could force myself to sit through a scary movie, but I would never choose to do so because what I saw would haunt my dreams for who knows how long. I could go to a spook alley, but I still can't control my boxing moves and I could be sued. They make you sign a waiver now, you know. And the rodents? Well, everyone knows they could carry the bubonic plague. I shelve them. Officially shelved. Up there. Out of the way. Yeah, they're my fears, but they're up there on the Shelf of Acceptance.
Let's return to the bat allegory. From it, I gleaned a healthy fear of bats and a determination to never let one near my head. I avoid bats. I run from bats. I shudder at their photographs. Family trips to Lake Powell include a tradition of sleeping on top of the houseboat. Do I? No. Hello. There are bats everywhere. Do I have superhuman hearing when it comes to squeaky clicking and flapping noises? Yes. Do I decline spelunking invitations? Usually. Have I ever wondered why it happened to Carma? Yes. Have I ever wondered if it was karma that the bat landed on Carma? Yes. Yes, I have.
Last month there was a bat in our church's chapel. During the closing hymn, it awakened and began wide swooping passes over the startled congregation. Was the bat in need of sanctuary? Was there a concentrated hairspray aroma that drew it inside? I don't know, because I got out of there as fast as I got away from Carma and her bad bat karma.
There will be no stare-down with a bat. I will not channel my inner Bruce Wayne by installing a bat signal atop my roof or dressing in sculpted Kevlar to fight crime dressed as the symbol of my fear. Why? Because bats have been shelved. Officially. I have accepted that bats are possibly my Kryptonite - my fatal flaw - my hamartia. I'm the woman with bats in her belfry. I'm fine with it. I've shelved them upon the Shelf of Acceptance with mice and clowns and Freddy Krueger. Is it a crowded shelf? Yup. I told you. This was a mere sampling. See the photo above. That Shelf of Acceptance is fully stocked.
My advice? Face fears when you must. Shelve them when you can. And never sit outside at twilight next to a woman sporting a bouffant. Nothing good can come of it.
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