The Fear Factor

Ever been afraid of something all through your life? Well I thought I was a person who didn’t have any phobias (or anxiety disorders). I was never afraid of any stupid scary things, when I was a kid, like darkness or the boogeyman who hides behind the closet, I was never afraid of heights, closed spaces or water or whatever. It was not until high school that I realized that I was not free from fears. My family usually used to take a train to our hometown during vacations, but that year my dad decided that it was high time we upgrade to a flight.Being trapped in a pressurized aluminum tube at 35000 feet up in the sky always gave me the creeps. I felt terrible all throughout my first flight. It was monsoon season and flight was bumpy and it appears that I held my mom’s wrist so tight that it went white coz of my grip (damn…and she still makes fun of me for being such a sissy boy that day). I thought that the beautiful flight attendants would keep my mind distracted from the fear, but to my dismay it was an Indian Airlines flight and the flight attendants looked so old that I assumed that they had kids of marriageable age. Since then every time I used to board a flight the fear would come rushing back to me. But eventually I learnt to hide my fear and look cool… but still it is always there inside me whenever I board that dingy aluminum tube.

Hmmm so that was about aviatophobia. After my tenth standard my parents decided that it wud be best for me to continue my education in Trivandrum. So off I went to my hometown Trivandrum. I used to stay with my grandparents in their very old traditionally built house with tiled roofs and false ceiling made of wood. It even had an attic. My granny warned me that there might be rats running about in the attic… but ha I wasn’t afraid of mice. So I decided to explore the attic one day. I climbed up to the attic and started rummaging through the stuff kept there. Then I felt something crawling up my leg, I lifted my pants and found a gigantic spider almost as big as my palm, I went white with fear. It was of the likes I had seen in discovery channel and animal planet!! I had held golf ball sized beetles in my hand when I was a kid but this was ridiculous!! I did some weird tribal dance to shake it off my leg… banged my head somewhere in the process and somehow managed to avoid trampling the poor creature. A few days later I found one of its relatives in the bathroom and this one was even bigger, maybe the daddy of the one in the attic. Afraid to take a shower with a deranged spider watching me all the time, I asked my granny to somehow shoo it away. She had a look at it and told me that they look big and dangerous but are quite harmless, but again I insisted to get it off my bathroom, then she brought a broom and ZAP!! the daddy spider went to insect heaven.

Hmmm so I am scared of flying and weird looking spiders… what are you afraid of ??