Talk About My Worst Nightmare
I am completely terrified of having surgery. Mainly because I am afraid that I will wake up during the procedure, unable to move because of anesthesia, but acutely aware of being cut open. Quite frankly, I thought that perhaps I had picked up on this fear from an urban legend or something. But it happens. You can imagine my horror when THIS was the first item in my Google Reader this evening.
If I ever have surgery, I’m going to check out the doctors that tend to go overboard on the anesthesia. I want someone a little heavy-handed. I’m ok with being groggy for a couple of hours afterward, as opposed to feeling someone cut me open and having nightmares for the rest of my life.
I have a lot of fears. I have a fear of being buried alive that I can trace back to a specific moment in high school. I was passing through the club restaurant on my way to a tennis lesson and a soap opera was on. One of the main characters was buried alive and it was showing her waking up IN HER COFFIN and realizing what was going on and freaking out. It turns out that her twin had rigged a speaker system in her coffin so that she could hear all the terrible things the evil twin was doing as she suffocated. I was late for that tennis lesson and I didn’t do very well that day. I kept thinking about how awful being buried alive would be.
The worst story I have ever heard about being buried alive was the story of Thomas a Kempis. Thomas was a monk and author of a book called The Imitation of Christ. He lived during the 1400′s in England and died about 1471. Buried, funeral, all that jazz. Then, a couple of years later, the Church decided that they wanted to make him a saint, so they exhumed him. I am not sure why he was exhumed, but he was. When they opened his coffin, they found the bottom of the lid completely destroyed with scratch marks and splinters underneath the monk’s fingernails. And to add insult to extreme injury, they denied him sainthood, saying that a true saint would not fight death so vehemently.
Another thing I am afraid of is sort of a variation on the same thing. One is someone being underneath my car, slicing my achilles tendon with a knife, stealing my keys and using my car to run me over. I realize this is sort of specific, but I think it was a scene in Urban Legend. I’m pretty sure that happens to Rebecca Gayheart at the end. The other is someone hiding in the backseat of my car. In my nightmare, I look in the rearview mirror and there is another set of eyes staring back at me, very movie-like. When I was in high school, I had a car that someone could climb in the trunk and push the backseats down to get in the cab and I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends that this was my one true fear. My friend Andrew stole my keys during musical rehearsal and popped my trunk so that he could sneak in my car before I left. Needless to say, I did not talk to Andrew for a while and I almost killed both of us when he revealed himself.
Other fears include (but are not limited to): drowning, spiders, snakes, mice and ghosts.
Ok. So spill it. What’s yours?
I watched a total documentary about waking up on the operating table. I know I brought it up at lunch when I worked at SL. Hannah and Christin Johnson were there; you may have been also.
I am deathly afraid of getting hit by a train. I have almost been hit by a train 2 times in Talladega, AL.
I’m also afraid of space. We’ve discussed this before.
Mascots terrify me, as do people with paint on their faces.
Wait… you were “passing through the club restaurant on my way to a tennis lesson”??? Very well Mimi, be a dear and DO say hello to Feefee and Smeddly for us.
Were you in an episode of Arrested Development?
My galeophobia is documented here:
http://shaneetheredge.blogspot.com/2008/05/vacationalizing.html
1. The achilles tendon scene in Urban Legend happens to a professor, and there may have been spikes involved in the parking deck (you know the kind that flatten your tires if you leave without paying).
2. I share your fear of being buried alive. Too much Edgar Allen Poe.
3. I am also terrified of corpses, and I used to be afraid that the ceiling above my bed would collapse and dump one on me while I was sleeping.
I could go on for days about this, but I don’t need everyone to know JUST how neurotic I really am…
I’m afraid of natural disasters…mainly tornadoes (which, thanks to spellcheck, I just learned you spell with the “e”). I’m also afraid of dress-up characters, a la Chuck E. Cheese or those crazies that stand outside of Build-A-Bear to lure in small children. Embarrassingly, I’m also about 87% afraid of the dark.
i woke up on the operating table during my second knee surgery. Not only did I wake up, but I asked the Dr. how it was going. He replied “Almost done with everything, just have to take that screw out of your femur.” Just after that, he cut into my thigh and I felt it…terrible pain.
I have an irrational fear of aquarium fish.
Whenever I move into a new city that has an aquarium (like the one in Atlanta) I visit in hopes of being the bigger person. Note: I usually leave early and have stopped these endeavors all-together because the last time I went to one there was a moving sidewalk exhibit. I thought, “Oh cool, I love to pretend I’m on the Jetsons just like any other person. Let’s go. Neat” and other such positive thinking. Nope. We get halfway down this thing, I’m surrounded by people forward and back, and suddenly the ceiling and both walls become glass. We’re in one of those stupid tunnel aquariums. I hit the floor shouting fake obscenities (holy cahoots, jesus mary and joseph, and dad-gummit the more prominent ones) and wouldn’t get up until the thing ended.
My goal is to someday touch the glass. So far, no dice. I couldn’t even touch the glass of an empty exhibit.
It’s not even fish in general. Nope. Just the ones in fake glass habitats.
Aren’t you proud to be my friend now.
I’m with Sarah on this one…mascots scare the living mess out of me. Anytime I can’t see people’s faces, that scares me.
I’m not good with clowns. At all.
Drowning…that wouldn’t be fun.
Jackrabbits…don’t ask, my sister was horrible to me as a child and told me what “real” jackrabbits look like… Donnie Darko anyone?
I have something similar to the achilles tendon thing except I picture something under my bed grabbing and pulling me under into their world. It happened on Ghostbusters that I saw as a child.
Until recently when I heard my grandparents talking about this, I didn’t know that you could swallow and choke on your tongue. This totally freaked me out when I heard it, so now I’m terrified to pass out and swallow my tongue.
You totally forgot to mention mustard. You know how if feel about needles. Mom
Erin I cannot believe that you saw that you randomly caught that seen from Days of Our Lives when Sammy was buried alive. That has been my fear since I too randomly saw that scene when I was at my friend’s house (circa 1994 I believe?) and her babysitter was watching it. It has been in my mind ever since, and I distinctly remember not being able to eat lunch that day.
My other fear in the beach. Sand=dirt, then there’s sea creatures, gross co-eds, overpriced crap, and you have to take showers 6 times a day.