Fear and the Fear of Fear

There I said it all in the title. OK, its out there and lying like a cold dead fish on the counter top, waiting on us to chop it up, roll it around in our own special ideas of how to prepare and serve it. Some love it, others hate it and I think maybe the majority of us spend our lives trying to cope with it. Fear.

I will be the first to admit I am a collection of shivering, wide eyed awake in the middle of the night because I can't sleep fear. I fear the unknown, I fear the expected, I fear Y2K really happened and a huge Government cover-up is hiding the fact that we are now totally back in the stone age. I fear the death, harm, sickness, and possible future of my children. I fear loud thunderstorms, weak bladders, spiders, mean people, and Bigfoot.

I know that the majority of people that ride in cars (which is the majority of the majority of us all) will at some point in their lives be harmed in a major car crash, and that scares the crap out of me every time I pull out of my driveway! Statistically I know I am almost guaranteed to possibly die or be dismembered in a car wreck. And THAT fear doesn't even compare to the gut gnawing sick fear I feel every time my children leave in a car, and I don't care who is driving!

Yeah I gotta lot of fears. I fear poverty, health care, lack of health care and the Dentist. I fear I am not working enough, not getting enough done, not creating the security necessary to care for my family and for the time that will be here all too soon when I need more extensive health care.

But none of those fears even compare to my fear of Facebook.

Yeah that Social Networking thing scares the crap out of me because the walls I established between the real me and the Internet me is slowly getting torn down. So now the friends I gleefully spent years with in AOL Chat rooms where I encouraged Lesbian threesomes, are now making comments on the same page my pastor might visit on a regular basis. My kids go to my page as well as my co-workers, and all of the extended families of my co-workers. The Mayor of my hometown is a fellow graduating classmate of mine, and a Facebook friend.

"Not a big deal," you say? "Relax, Nobody cares about that stuff," you think? OK! OK! OK! Let me give you another example.

A few months ago I would have rushed to the computer to tell you of the verbal exchange between my wife and I. You know, one of those things where I am suggesting we have a bit of "Mom and Dad" time. So innuendo leads to suggestion leads to playful touching that leads to "the look."

Only now I am told, "That's not going to happen, for some reason my bottom hurts."

And while I fearlessly looked her straight in the eye with one arched eyebrow and suavely asked, "...you think it hurts now...?" followed by a bit of wagging of those arched eyebrows.

OK I am terrified to post that in a blog entry! Did I mention my wife and her friends read this thing? My mother reads this! My kids read this! And there is no way in the WORLD you can have a good entertaining blog if you allow yourself to be controlled by fear. Fear of castration with a dulled butter knife from the kitchen drawer... while sleeping.... in a house in the country... where nobody can hear me scream... that would report it... because they read the Blog too.... and they were probably the ones that suggested it.

FEAR!