Big Plans

So at this time tomorrow I will be IN THE CIT-TAY! The Big City, the Big Apple, Hog-butcher to the ... no, wait.

I'm going into New York tomorrow. My sister is already praying for me. She expects me to wind up dead, and said that if our father were still alive, I'd be re-thinking this whole thing. So now you know where I'm coming from, or whom I'm coming from, anyway.

Here's what this reminds me of, a little. Not long after K started college in DC, there was that whole sniper thing going on down there. In October, the Hubs and I went down for Parents Weekend, and lots of people said to me "How can you go down there when it's so dangerous?" and I thought, Hey, I'd be quite the coward if I didn't go because I was afraid of the sniper and yet thought it was okay for my kid to live there full-time.

R works in the city; she goes in every day by train and comes home alive.

Now it's true that in general I don't like going into the city. However, it seems that there are times when I can make myself do something that would otherwise terrify me, oh, say, like driving into the wilds of Connecticut to spend time with people I've never met. And yet that was an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. Not that I'm expecting tomorrow night to be life-changing, but I think it will be interesting and fun and I know I can do it.

Here's the plan: I'm going to drive to R's, park there, and catch the 4.30 train at the end of of her block and get into Penn Station around 5.15. I will walk -- in daylight -- the three or four blocks from Penn Station to her building. The event I'm going to is there, and in fact, she's running it.

(The event, btw, is a screening of a new TV show on the human heart and heart disease in women. There will be a "heart healthy" dinner served, there will be couple of guest speakers, and a goodie bag full of stuff, like pamphlets, and heart-healthy chocolate and who knows what else.)

The event is over at 9.00, but R will probably not be able to leave much before 9.30, which means we will not catch the 9.30 train but the 10.30. Whatever, we'll be hanging out together and will come home on the same train. We'll walk the half block to her building, where my car will be parked, and I'll drive home.

My only concern is the fatigue, since I'm always so tired, but I'll have a latte or something in the afternoon and that should keep me perked up, that and the fact that I'll be sitting in a room full of people and will have something to do, essentially. So I'll be fine.

I think my sister's concern is not so much robbery or street violence, but terrorism. Really. Here's what I think. Do not go into dangerous neighborhoods wearing jewels (note to self: take off diamond pendant before I go) or do things that are otherwise obviously tempting fate. That's just stupid. Terrorism? It's so random that there's no way to plan for it, so it's best left un-thought of. My sister, at this point, is afraid of public transportation. (Which is funny, because other than airplanes, she hasn't used public transportation in years.) She can't believe I'm getting on a New Jersey Transit train and going into Penn Station in New York City. Because they could be terrorist targets. Tomorrow. Night.

Oh, come on. As I've said before, if we live our lives in perpetual fear of terrorism, then they've won. And that's that.

So there. See you on Wednesday.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1595

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

I'm not fond of the dark, but I'm not afraid of it. Afraid of falling down while walking in the dark, perhaps, but that's another issue.

Everybody is afraid of something.

My best-known fear, and I mean known to everyone who knows me, is snakes. Or, serpents, as we like to call them euphemistically in this house, rather than speak their dreaded name. (My father refused to call them serpents, although my mother did and sister does, but more on him later.) This is a true, full-blown phobia, and although therapy helped a little, in fact, I'm quite comfortable with my fear I wasn't in therapy for that; I had bigger fish to fry. But we did touch on the subject, and the therapist asked, quite reasonably, what I thought would happen if I were confronted with a snake.

Easy question, easy answer. I would cease to exist. If I saw a snake serpent up close -- I can hardly even type those words -- my life would not continue. I would die. From fear, maybe, I don't know. The essence of a true phobia is that you connect it with your fear of death.

I am not afraid of, for example, spiders, although plenty of people are, including people to whom I have given birth, although I don't like spiders at all. Spiders have more of a serious ick factor than they do a fear-of-death factor. I don't like them, but if I see one I can pretty much swat it with a magazine or a shoe and be done with it. The vegan Hubs will gently carry them outside, and I think that's lovely. I do not care for uninvited living creatures of any sort to share my designated space. They gotta take what comes. It's a dog-eat-dog world. You get the picture.

The house I grew up in was much more spidery than this one, for which I am grateful. Not, I mean, that we had them there, but that we don't get them much here, and the ones here are more like baby spiders, which is a little more icky, actually. I always kind of got the impression that our spider situation back home was that there were lots of big trees near the house and touching it. Probably had nothing to do with it. We have fewer touching trees here, but the house is a good ten years older than the house I grew up in, so you'd think, more. More webs here, but I'm sure that's a housekeeping issue more than anything. Although we have an unfinished basement and attic, and everything back home was finished up, a split level with no room for expansion. Anyway, makes no difference.

Which is all to say that when I reached for my jammies last night, which I more or less tuck under my pillow every morning, a little baby spider crawled out across them. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ICKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. Naturally I squashed the sucker, and then gathered up my things (and my pillowcase) and baked them in the dryer for an hour.

I don't like spiders although I don't fear them, but I have a horror of bugs or spiders crawling on me. This is one of the big reasons for me not being an outdoorsy sort of gal. That's their world, and I give it to them to have all for their own; I only need occasional safe passage through it.

When I was about four, we were away in the country for two weeks in the summer. (If you're reading closely, yes, it was the same week that the picture up there on the right of me and my mother was taken.) One afternoon, I sat with several little girls and a counselor under a tree. No idea what we were doing, but making those loop potholders seems a likely possibility. Then, all in a moment, there was a spider on me. It had dropped down out of the tree, and was maybe two or three inches across. I screamed. Everybody screamed. I screamed so loud that my knight in shining armor, who was playing baseball on a field about a hundred yards away, ran as fast as he could and swatted the thing off me. My knight was Philip, the son of our family friends, who was my big sister's age and who was the closest I ever had in life to a big brother.

So yeah, I don't like spiders on me, and not on my pajamas, either. And I ain't looking at no snakes, and no pictures of snakes, and no graven images of snakes. And my father, who dismissed my panic with those soothing words "Nobody likes them"? It wasn't until I was nearly 50 and he was over 80 that I found out that he, like me, really, really, really didn't like snakes. He just didn't let his fear carry him, because he was Mr. Stoic and could steel himself for anything, no matter how much he feared it. But it was nice to know that what I had thought was him belittling my fear wasn't actually that at all. He was trying to calm me, to put it into perspective for me. And, as it turned out, to convince himself.

watching Ocean's 11 :: entry # 1486