Cinderblocks, and Many Other Things, Scare the Hell Out Of Me





My son Charlie writes a morning news letter that is dependably in people's email in-boxes between 8 and 9 a.m.

This morning, it's late.

Instead of thinking rational thoughts first like a) perhaps his computer fizzled out or b) the internet is down because he, in his carefree and wanton college lifestyle, neglected to pay the bill, I immediately jump to the conclusion that something has happened to him.

Immediately.

There is no slow elevation from a small ember of fear. It's a four alarm blaze right away.

I have always been like this.

Since I was a tiny girl, any aberration in routine or unexpected deviation meant that disaster had occured. Needless to say, this has exhausted those to whom I am close enough to reveal these fears.

If Seth doesn't call from the car on his way home, he is most certainly on the side of the road, hurled from his vehicle, unable to see because his glasses have been thrown from his face, one grasping claw outstretched to call me from the phone that is just inches beyond his reach. Oh, God.

When I was a little girl, if my mother was not where I thought she should be the minute I thought she should be there, I was absolutely positive that she'd fallen into some unseen crack in the earth or had been abducted by aliens....or, at the very worst, stepped through some portal leading into another dimension and would now exist only in a parallel universe.

I am not kidding. 

I read endless fairy tales and science fiction as a kid. I watched the Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits and occasionally got my hands on one of the then  popular--and not intended for impressionable minds--paperbacks with titles like "Stranger Than Fiction." I was a mess.

As I got older, while the fear of alien abduction remains (most specifically, I'm worried that I am an alien), my other fears have become more realistic--terrorism, random violence, nuclear melt-downs,car jackings and accidents, illness and, of course, wait for it.....Justin Bieber*.

Seth has told me thousands of times that I should be more afraid of small unexpected stuff, thereby hoping to quell my more grandiose terrors.

His favorite example: I shouldn't fear flying because I could be puttering in the garden or prancing down a city street and a cinder block could fall on my head and kill me.

I have learned two things from this: Seth has an obsession with cinderblocks. He seems to believe that they are everywhere, waiting to fall on people's heads. The other thing this has taught me is to be terribly afraid of them. So, I've simply added cinderblocks to my list of things to fear.

What I experienced when the boys were late for dinner or missed their curfew, was so immense that it cannot be put into words. As was my gratitude and relief when they showed up with an excuse or reason for their tardiness.

It's a fact that women's brains have a larger portion devoted to anxiety and worry. I think I must have gotten in line twice when this was being distributed yet, somehow, entirely missed the "long legs and small nose" line.

So, Charlie just overslept this morning. I called him a minute ago and, upon picking up the phone, he didn't say hello, but simply said, "You thought I was dead, didn't you?"

Well, yes. But I'm very glad you're not, you sleepy smart ass.

*Are you not impressed that I managed to negatively insert Justin Bieber into a post again?

I have no fear of Hannibal.