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What are you scared of?
- Thread starter Dodgeman
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Cockroaches.
No other creature on the planet gives me the creeps like those retched things.
No other creature on the planet gives me the creeps like those retched things.
Honestly? Don’t click if you’re the sort that lacks empathy. I don’t want to hear it.
Whether I’m capable of carrying on much longer.
Yes it is an interesting thread. What hit me was the lack of posts on this thread considering the amount of people on this forum. Maybe, just maybe people have a phobia of telling or not being able to admit to other people what they are scared of.
Or maybe they are not quite able to articulate it, or do not wish to articulate it, or maybe what scares them now is not quite what scared them when they were younger.
I've been chased by elk and a large boar. I don't fancy being trampled or have a horn rammed up my backside. One of my late grandfathers did visit Africa many many decades ago and spoke of the incidents where wild beasts would brush up against the convoy. I think they stick to higher roads now.
From what I have been told by people who seem to know such things (such as some of the local people I have met in Kenya), the hippopotamus is considered to be a lot more dangerous than the rhinoceros. That is the beast to worry about, although I'll concede that I, personally, wouldn't fancy encountering a rhinoceros in the wild either.
I definitely feel the same.
Similarly, and related I guess, my worst fear is not a wild animal or other people — but waking up paralysed — unable to move — not an eyelid that you can use to twitch your way to writing a bestselling novel… just complete paralysis.
And being awake to the horror of it.
That scares the bejeezus out of me.
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Ha! Rhinos… yes. But the buffalo are the real mean guys.
A rhino chases you down, stomps around a bit (on you) and then goes off to chew some scrub.
The buffalo? That motherf***r reverses over you and comes back to finish the job at their leisure.
Agreed.
However, - having given the matter some thought - I have worked in some of the most challenging places in the world, and suspect - perhaps as a consequence of that, or, maybe as a consequence of ageing generally - that my sense of fear is less sensitive or more numbed than it used to be - but, while I would agree that waking up to physical paralysis would be terrifying, losing my mind - to something akin to Alzheimers - is probably what would terrify me most.
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Well, I have seen close hand the suffering Alzheimers brings (and I remember so have you).
When the first signs appear I shall take a holiday and say long farewells, get all my things in order and then hop on a plane to Switzerland.
I only hope that I will have the strength to act on it.
What a depressing thought!
Sorry about being depressing.
When I read this thread title, - an excellent thread by the way - I was horrified to realise that - nowadays - little bothered me all that much.
It took quite some thought to try to identify (and then articulate) what would bother me (scare me) most.
I watched as alzheimers destroyed my mother, and my grandfather died slowly from cancer. I will not die like they did. I'm a strong willed man, and I'm not scared of death. I'm also not worried about the law, so I will end it at home, in a non messy way. I want to leave a nice corpse for science.
Why would you even post that? I've had buffalo meat one or twice. That'll show 'em. Waking up to find you're paralyzed is indeed frightening. Sleep paralysis, while not the same, is quite frightening, too.
My wife and I have standing orders to "pillow" each other at the first signs of dementia. Though one day I misplaced my keys and I saw her lurking around with a pillow - I had to clarify I was just a little rattled that day ... put the pillow _down_.
(We joke about it, but having lived through it with a family member, it's pretty goddamn horrific).
I used to fear the dentist but finally figured it would be more sensible to fear losing my teeth and also realized I feared repetitions of past painful dental care experience, so not irrational. Finally got a dentist who believed me when I said “listen up: that is not numb”. Problem solved.
So now, and perhaps absurdly considering my age and the likelihood I should be fearing stuff like dementia or tripping over a misplaced shoe and breaking my neck, I’m mostly only afraid of scary movies. Even more absurdly, I know this but sometimes try to watch them anyway. But really, the thriller genre is not for me, even if I can enjoy reading the books.
Anyway on the bright side, it’s refreshing to know that apparently when I get into watching a movie that turns scary, I have apparently and completely escaped any cares and pressures of my actual life. That, after all, is one reason for my deciding to watch any movie. It’s just too bad I can’t honor the filmmaker by at least finishing the viewing of a good thriller.
So now, and perhaps absurdly considering my age and the likelihood I should be fearing stuff like dementia or tripping over a misplaced shoe and breaking my neck, I’m mostly only afraid of scary movies. Even more absurdly, I know this but sometimes try to watch them anyway. But really, the thriller genre is not for me, even if I can enjoy reading the books.
Anyway on the bright side, it’s refreshing to know that apparently when I get into watching a movie that turns scary, I have apparently and completely escaped any cares and pressures of my actual life. That, after all, is one reason for my deciding to watch any movie. It’s just too bad I can’t honor the filmmaker by at least finishing the viewing of a good thriller.
Well, I've seen what Alzheimer's has done to my mother, a woman with a fierce questioning intelligence and a terrific sense of humour. Traces of the humour still exist, but, overall, just seeing how she has declined - and remembering who she was and the conversations we used to have - is heart-breaking.
Does she still know who you are? It gets really bad when they don't recognize you at all. In the end, my mother would just stare at me like what is this stranger doing here.
That is soul-destroying stuff, isn't it?
Until very recently - I'm working abroad, so am sometimes away for months at a time - she knew that I was someone of importance to her; once returning home, she recognised me - or responded to me immediately, and was openly thrilled to see me, not releasing my hand; another time, it took more than a day for some sort of memory mechanism to kick in and for her to respond at a fundamental emotional level to me.
The last time I was home, a few weeks ago, she didn't recognise me at all, not for days and days. Then, bizarrely, on her wedding anniversary (my father has been dead for 13 years, and they had an excellent marriage and a close friendship), she lit up, delighted, beamed, addressed me by the first syllable of his name, then faltered and her face crumpled as she realised that I was not him (though I look a little like him - I have some of his dark complexion); but after that, she was happy to see me.
Now, as to whether she knows I am her daughter, no, she doesn't and hasn't for a long time. She knows - because, to some extent, she responds to, one of my two brothers (as is the paradoxical way of life, the one who - again until very recently - would have been the least engaged and most distant of us all in the care of my mother) and is delighted when he shows up; he reminds her of her family, I think, and he makes her laugh. She doesn't know he is her son, but she responds at a fundamental level to him.
My other brother, who is loving, generous, kind, funny, dedicated and devoted - in character very similar to my father - she doesn't recognise at all - which is heart-breaking, although she does enjoy the attention he gives her.
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