Hats off to Scoutie for talking about the whale thing. I mean it. Everyone who knows her knows she has a real and significant phobia about whales. Her insights about its larger implications were very grownup.

Scoutie . . . → Read More: Things I am afraid of.]]>

Hats off to Scoutie for talking about the whale thing.  I mean it.  Everyone who knows her knows she has a real and significant phobia about whales.  Her insights about its larger implications were very grownup.

Scoutie also has a pretty dramatic fear of loud noises.  I never knew the origins of the whale phobia but I was sitting right next to her when the loud noise phobia began.

It was August.  A very hot afternoon in Southampton.  Scout was about 3 or 4.  She fell asleep en  route to a circus.  We had to wake her up in the parking lot.  There were already tons of people and loud music.  She was all crumpled and sweaty.  Cute but crumpled and sweaty.

We cajoled her up and through the turnstyles.  We were almost late (Scout no doubt had something to do with this.  She seemed to have demonstrated a phobia of promptness at a very early age) but got there just as the show began.

It couldn’t have been five minutes before they roll a canon out into the middle of the ring.  And then BBBOOOOMMM!  And a guy comes flying out of the canon.   Everyone cheers.

Scout comes flying out of the tent.  With her mothers flying after her.

That was the end of the circus for Scout.   There was no negotiation.  We knew it was over.  And based on who Scout had already become, we knew it would be a long time before she ever stepped foot into a circus tent again.  And that loud noises would never be her friend.

To her credit, however, once she stopped screaming, she wanted to know more.  Her innate curiosity shone through.  And for the next 2 1/2 hours during our ride home, she repeated:

“Why’d they shoot that guy out the canon?”

Maybe I should get back to the title of this post and the picture.

I’m going to, over the next few posts, ponder things I am afraid of.  Scout’s post inspired me.

So I’ll start with this picture.  I am afraid of:

1) Bar mitzvah parties with photo booths

2) Boys who know so much about wrestling that they can create just the right pose for a picture at a bar mitzvah photo booth.

3) My son growing up.

Lately has been heavy, and filled with fear.

I fear that I am coming to the realization that many college freshmen come to: I am (possibly) in the wrong major.

I fear that I am going to catch the awful stomach . . . → Read More: Completing the Immersion Effect]]>

Lately has been heavy, and filled with fear.

I fear that I am coming to the realization that many college freshmen come to: I am (possibly) in the wrong major.

I fear that I am going to catch the awful stomach virus that has put my friend Matt, his dad, 10 cousins, and grandmother, in the ER.

I fear that if I caught said “virus” (see link for my presumption), I might get even further behind in my work.

I fear that what they say is true, and that once you leave home for college, you never really go home again.

I fear that my cat will not remember me when I go home.

I fear, as I am an American citizen who pays extra attention to the news, that any day now, the hydrogen bomb will drop, I will have to hide under my desk, the Russians will attack from Cuba, the Communist countries will take over, the illegal Mexicans will revolt, the stock market will crash, my politicians are all sleeping with prostitutes, Al-Qaeda will attack and when they do they will target my coast, my city, my school, my dorm, and specifically, my room where I sleep peacefully at night.

But tomorrow, I will face my fears. Tomorrow at 6 p.m. I will face the greatest fear I have ever had: BIG THINGS.

Laugh and poke fun as you wish, but I have always had a phobia of big things. It started off when I was in kindergarten, and I had to be escorted out of Natural History Museum in New York City. Why, do you ask? Because of the whale. Because of that huge friggin’ whale, hanging from the ceiling, going after the squid. Except I wasn’t even looking at the squid. Until the movie “The Squid and the Whale” came out the other year, I had no idea there even was a squid. I was frozen by the whale, by the sheer magnitude of it. I could not move. I could not talk. I could not look away. I was transfixed by the most horrifying, massive object of all time. And it had teeth.

Years passed and I though it was just the whale. I was, as I fully expected to be, teased. Honestly, who has a fear of whales? I blamed Pinocchio. I screamed and cried when that whale swallowed him. It was unjust. He was so sad and lonely, and he just wanted to be a real boy. He didn’t ask to be “accidentally” incorporated into a gulp of sea water. He wasn’t ready or prepared.

And then I went to Paris, and saw the Eiffel Tower. It was not alive, nor was it threatening in any way, shape, or form. But it was huge. And everything around it was so small in comparison. It was this gigantic, unrealistically big object placed around objects nowhere near it’s size. It was horrifying. I could not look at it without feeling my chest close in on itself, my head spin, and my tongue sink deep into my small intestines.

That is my phobia, I realized. Really big things that are unnaturally big compared to everything else surrounding them. Having something so abnormal, yet only abnormal when compared to everything else around it.

Big things versus small things. Giant leaps in size, height, weight…or could we just say change?

Wait… Is it really that cliché? Maybe I am just afraid of giant leaps in change?

Yes, that sounds about right. I am afraid of change.

I am not afraid of the skyscrapers in Manhattan. I am not afraid of large people, or heights, or textbooks. Rather, I am afraid of the difference between something large and something small. I am afraid of the change in height existing between the Eiffel Tower and the surrounding Paris. I am afraid of the change in mass existing between me and the whale at the Natural History Museum. If everything was the size of the whale and the Eiffel Tower, it would not be as scary, because there would be no difference between it and everything else. If everything was the size of the whale and the Eiffel Tower, it would not be as scary because there would be no change.

But I am learning that something cannot grow, or develop, if it does not first start out as something smaller. Inevitably, everything must change.

And so tomorrow, I am going, with my pal Matt (who spent the last two days vomiting), to the IMAX Theater at the Boston Museum of Science. The explanation sums it all up:

In the Mugar Omni Theater, the world’s largest film format is projected onto a five-story-tall IMAX® Dome screen. It wraps audiences in larger-than-life images of flora, fauna, and faraway places. A state-of-the-art digital sound system completes the immersion effect.

Here is a link to the movie we will be seeing: Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk

Everything I am afraid of. Larger than life. Completes the immersion effect… Fear… Overwhelming… Change.