Boo Hoo subtitled Jody Don't Read This!!

(Viiiicky...)

During the month of October, monsters live under my bed. Vampires float outside my window. Pocked-faced escapees from the psychiatric unit of Western State Hospital stand in the shadows that line my driveway leaning on their sharpened axe which they will use to chop me limb from limb and hide me in my own blackberry bushes.

But only during the month of October.

(Viiiiiicky...)

Some time ago, I gave up the ghost of being scared all the time. I first became afraid when I was five. I stopped being afraid when I was 49 and fell into a deep depression from whence not even the Blair Witch could scare me. One day, a spectre rattled my shower curtain and I said, "Oh, just kill me and be done with it." Since then, I've only been truly frightened during the month of October and then only once or twice during that time. That Gerry is around when that happens is no small coincidence.

(Where are you, Vicky?)

So why the scaredy pants? When I was a child, Parker Brothers made a new game called Ouija Board. The game came with a whole two pieces - a board on which were letters and numbers, and a planchet on which two players lightly rested their fingers to "channel" a spirit. A question was asked by someone in the group of onlookers, and the spirit then guided the hands of the two players to the letters and numbers spelling out the answer. In our house, the Ouija Board only worked when I was one of the two players.

Now, clearly there is room for speculation on whether it is actually a "spirit" being channeled, or if the players themselves are subconsciously directing the planchet. I can only tell you that once, the planchet moved before any hands were placed upon it.

(Vicky, won't you come out and play with us?)

Then there was the time my best friend and I had a sleepover. In the middle of the night, her musical teddy bear began to play Clare de Lune from across the room. The musical box inside the bear, however, had always previously played Rockabye Baby...

(We like you, Vicky...)

And once, my mother stood by the side of my bed holding a butcher's knife, telling me it was time to get up. I mumbled something in my sleep, not fully waking. When I eventually woke up, she was gone, but her slippers were next to my bed where she'd been standing. I got out of bed and went down to the kitchen where she was cutting our sandwiches with a butcher knife. When I mentioned she'd left her slippers by the side of my bed, she looked at me with the strangest look on her face. I recounted the episode of her attempting to awaken me; she claimed to have never been in my room and pointed to her feet which were inside her slippers.

(Don't you like us?)

Fear is considered one of the baser emotions, similar to anger and joy. So how is it that fear has so much more power to incapacitate than those other emotions? Wikipedia hints that fear stems from a sense that an unacceptable situation may continue or worsen - as in the axe murderer waiting for me at the end of my driveway. It isn't the axe murderer I'm afraid of...it's what he might do.

For instance, the planchet didn't really move when there were no hands on it, but I was always afraid it would. The bear did, indeed, start playing music in the middle of the night, but it was the same tune it always played. And my mother never stood by the side of my bed with a butcher knife, but anytime she walked into my room, I was scared because I was fairly certain she was not there to hug me and kiss my anxious brow. In each of these cases, my anxiety over an unacceptable or uncomfortable situation turned to fear when I could not stop myself from thinking what if...

Is there, then, a mechanism in every human being that, during the normal course of maturing, develops into an ability to think rationally during moments of stress or anxiety? A recent study on talk radio indicates that spanking a child results in lower IQ because the child must cope with emotions that accompany pain, sorrow, perhaps even fear or anxiety. Is it possible, then, that other forms of child abuse result in a similar inability to envision realistic outcomes?

If that's the case, then FDR was right - the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.



Fear Itself "Chance" - Exclusive Clip
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