Irrational Fears

So it finally happened this morning. I finally slipped on something while jay-running. I didn't fall and, as I am writing this, find myself still very much alive, but the situation startled me a bit. Why? Because falling in the street while running and getting smashed by a car that is not left with enough time to stop is one of my worst random irrational fears.

What sort of random, nearly unfounded, perhaps unwritten fears do you keep in the back of your mind? On the train I thought of a few of mine and decided to share.

1. poking my eye out on the coat hook on the inside door of a bathroom stall. You know: urine, flush, turn absentmindedly, eye gone. Luckily, most of these hooks are at chest level, but the thought stays with me.

2. falling in the shower. It is not the falling so much as the being found and escorted to an emergency room naked.

3. jumping off of something and breaking my ankle. I am merely sharing this because it is a fear that is new as of the last year or so. I used to be fearless. Now I hardly like to run full speed for fear of breaking either my ankle or leg.

4. going cross-eyed from working too hard. I'll leave that as stated.

5. falling from a balcony or ledge. I often while on a balcony or ledge walk to the edge, glance at my anticipated demise and think silently to myself what if I fell. Even scarier than the thought of dying here is living and suffering from all the "breaks" (see #3, above; also, I must attribute this to a co-worker who spawned the thought)

6. getting dive bombed by birds. I especially often consider getting attacked while eating my morning bagel on the walk to work. Newark birds are aggressive and hungry. I also often think of a pigeon just simply losing control and falling from the sky. I hate pigeons because they are fat and lazy and it would hardly surprise me to see one fall from the sky – not from being dead, but simply being unable to support its weight. This fear is someone founded --- ASK KEVIN. Kevin played witness to me being dive-bombed by not ONE, but TWO birds. That Parisian bird was headhunting ---- and it was headhunting me!

7. getting clunked on the head by a falling fire escape. I avoid walking under those ladders whenever possible, but with the multitude of fire escapes and foot traffic on the NYC sidewalks and avoiding a fear of walking on sewers, which I won't bore you with, it is nearly impossible.

I am done, it is time to get to work. I need to get to work and work quickly because I also fear my boss. Her wrath is like whoa.

Later.