fear is what keeps us here...

“ I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Fear is a funny thing. It can motivate. It can cause people to freak out and start crying. It can cause people to rise above what they thought they could accomplish and do great things. It can give people a cheap thrill-hence the huge popularity of both thrill rides and scary movies. (one time me and my small girl were having a father-daughter day and we decided to go to the movies. It was just when Saw had come out. I lifted her in my arms, nestled her head on my cheek and asked the ticket taker person, “Two for Saw please.”
She reacted with abject horror and I laughed and said, “Come on man I jes kidding.” Hilarious. This is fun for me.
I have been afraid many times in my life. I am still scared of certain things.

Clowns- dude clowns are freaking scary as hell. My mom can tell you I had a visceral reaction to clowns. First off, they ain’t funny. Has anyone ever in the history of clowndom EVER laughed at clown’s crazy antics? I didn’t think so. They are obviously all felons on the lam. Or why the crazy make-up? For reals.

Bridges- yeah laugh if you want to. All I know is that when I am on a bridge I am literally threads away from an icy death with the sounds of my dying family echoing in my ears. I don’t like the fact that my life is dependant on the fact that some factory worker on the Good-year assembly faked the results of a drug test. Hate em, man.

Hard work. That was for my dad. Sounds like something the old curmudgeon would say huh?

Anyway the first time fear caused me to rise above myself was when I was twelve years old. I was in my bed in the basement ,which is a totally scary room anyway (I once spent an entire evening freaked out and immobile because I thought there was a witch in the room with me. My parents were so far away (two stories up) that a witch could easily roast, flay and eat me with impunity, my shrieks echoing throughout the basement, unheeded by the rest of my family, who were cocooned in their master suite blaring the entire “Die Hard Trilogy”…oh yeah it was a coat rack.
Where was I?
Oh yeah. I was woken at about one by my father opening the door and pressing the cold steel of a butcher knife into my soft pre-pubescent hands. He whispered to me-
“There are Hispanic gangsters outside”
You need to go around the one side, I will go around the other.”
I nodded wordlessly. Our house is a dome. (they were the hotness for a while in 1976 man. Everyone who was awesome lived in a geodesic dome. I never felt weird or anything about it. )
So his plan I guess? He would go around one side, I would sneak around the other side and I guess we would meet and just slash the m-fers to bloody pieces. In retrospect my dad was no General Patton when it came to militairy strategerizing.
I remember that trip vividly. The brush, while in daylight was welcoming albeit a bit scarce, at night turned malevolent and threatening. My pulse quickened at the though of fighting these gangsters who were casing our house for their mis-gotten gains. I crept, a veritable shadow, a night stalker running on hate. I was a panther, a lithe killer. I came around the stairs on the left and, raising my weapon, was prepared for a to the death battle. I was greeted by my dad kinda shaking his head, rubbing his beard.
He said, “I am on this new migraine medicine. Go on back to sleep.”

And you thought the whole donut in milk thing was weird.