Irrational Fears Thread

I have the dumbest irrational fear! LOL

I can't stick my hand in a mailbox without looking inside it first to make sure there isn't a venomous snake in there ready to bite my hand.

Mind you, I live in NW Ohio and pretty sure there are no venomous snakes around here, or in my mailbox.

That's it ... that's my irrational fear list!

 

Believing there is a snake in a place where you don't need to worry about snakes = irrational.

Looking in your mailbox to make sure there isn't anything you do need to be worried about = smart

Sorry if I up your creeped out factor, but I had a black widow living in my mailbox for a while. I always—and still to this day—name damn sure I know what is in there before I reach in.

 

That’s up there with black widow in an outhouse.

Mailboxes can get bees too - either inside or underneath. Usually wasps.

Strangest wasp nest I’ve ever seen: went to get gas in my SUV and opened the little door and holy FUCK.

That’s one way to draw unwanted attention to yourself at the qwik-ee mart.

 

I’ve lived and worked in buildings with elevators for 30+ years and am not afraid of them and am not usually claustrophobic. But there is one elevator that I used to ride in all the time that went from the subway up to the street level. I was always afraid not that it would get stuck, but that something random and rare would happen above ground - an earthquake, a bomb going off - and I would die in that elevator and no one would know I was down there. I haven’t taken it since before Covid so I sort of forgot. That’s the only elevator I’ve ever had that feeling about.

 

Trump's guy messed up our mail so much that sometimes it doesn't get delivered until 9 p.m. Our route has no regular carrier. They switch around, paying OT for somebody to deliver after they're done with their regular route. Thus, I always carry a flashlight to go get the mail, checking the box for creepy things. I completely understand.

 

I once had an old beater car that I didn't drive for weeks at a time. One day, I found the wasps had built a nest in one of the tail lights.

Another time, I decided to drive it to work just to let it run for a minute. I rode there with the windows down, and when I arrived noticed there was a wasp inside the car. I hate wasps (one of my irrational fears) and jumped out of the car. Then I saw another one ... and a third. It took me a minute to realize that they had built a nest in the side mirror. Got some spray from our maintenance guy and hosed that sumbitch down like a fireman putting out a five-alarm fire.

I hate a damn wasp. One of my secret sick pleasures is to smack one with a newspaper and then drop the fresh corpse on an ant hill as a warning to others. Wasps are a delicacy for ants. They'll tear it apart over the course of an hour or two. It's kind of fascinating to watch nature at work.

 

A troubled kid in our apartment building becoming a firebug and lighting the whole place on fire and we're totally fucked on the top floor. Or just some dipshit smoking in bed and falling asleep. Or just a kid playing with matches. But someone, somewhere in the building, sending us up in flames.

 

Wife can see a 3-foot snake slithering along and not blink an eye. And she got angry when I had Orkin exterminate a nest of wasps from one of our shrubs.

But a half-inch spider sends her shrieking.

 

The only time I’ve gotten freaked out on an escalator was riding one up from Peachtree Center MARTA station in Atlanta. I had to take the elevator back down, because the thought of the return trip petrified me.

 

That's a looong escalator. The one time we did Dragoncon and stayed offsite and used MARTA to come in to town, we were a third of the way up when it broke down. The wife has two bad knees, needs bilat total knee replacements, and she had to climb up all those stairs. She was hurting and slow, and the line of impatient assholes behind us were not very sympathetic.

It wasn't pleasant.

 

I HATE the little thing you ride to go up in the St. Louis arch.

I also hate ski lifts and those cable cars you ride at amusement parks.