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Old 02-10-2008, 12:55 AM   #61
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Old 02-10-2008, 03:12 AM   #62
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condoms..... the box says one size fits all and i always find them to big. i keep getting trauma ha ha ha
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Old 02-10-2008, 09:01 AM   #63
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Hurricanes, tornadoes and volcanos. I don't consider any of these unreasonable fears. I get inconsolable when there is a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, no sleeping, nauseous, etc. until it comes ashore somewhere. The tornadoes and volcanoes are just nightmares I have had all my life. I think the tornado thing started after a viewing of the Wizard of Oz when I was about 4. The volcano thing started after living in Hawaii in the early 60's about the same time.
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Old 02-10-2008, 09:24 AM   #64
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condoms..... the box says one size fits all and i always find them to big. i keep getting trauma ha ha ha
She laughed because my condom said "Shorty's" on the side.

I told her, "Yeah, but when you unroll it it says 'Shorty's Truckstop and Restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee'..."
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Old 02-10-2008, 09:54 AM   #65
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I have absolutely NO fear of skydiving! 'Cause there ain't no way in h*ll that I'm ever going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane without any reasonable or apparent NEED!!! Those people are NUTS!
When you get to know the pilots better, you'll realize that skydiving is a good skill to have. I did it as a teenager with military equipment but for some reason I can't find any reason to do it as an adult, no matter how much better the gear is. Can't seem to find a reason to do bungee jumping, either.

My phobia is roller coasters and, in particular, Disney's "California Screamin" coaster and their "Tower of Terror" ride. I've done them but I haven't enjoyed them one little bit, especially the way the suspense builds up before Disney yanks the floor out from under you.

Turns out that I've married a roller-coaster freak. Luckily we're raising one, too, so I no longer have to do my share. They go on the TT together and wave their hands overhead or toss coins in the air. I just man the safety-observer's post and steel myself to sweep up the pieces...
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Old 02-10-2008, 10:04 AM   #66
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condoms..... the box says one size fits all and i always find them to big.
Well, you are one of the few guys who would admit it!

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Old 02-10-2008, 10:09 AM   #67
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When you get to know the pilots better, you'll realize that skydiving is a good skill to have.
Martha, Meadbh and F-one, paging Nords STAT!

Whaddaya mean??

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Old 02-10-2008, 10:32 AM   #68
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I have recently developed a phobia about driving here in Italy. On my inaugural vacation trip 10+ years ago, I rented a car with sis (she wouldn't drive) and went from Rome all the way down to Sicily on the ferry, around Sicily and back up to Rome via the Amalfi coast. It was great despite:
1.) getting stranded on a scruffy beach in the middle of nowhere for a couple of hours because the rental car wouldn't start. After many aborted attempts I figured out that it was a bad contact in the hatchback and the car wouldn't start with the hatch "open" (no lights or signals to that effect.. just trial and error and cussedness on my part). Beach = sand = problem finally solved.
2.) Driving in Naples where no one pays any attention to the few stoplights.. it's just a kind of pig-pile. One expat blogger recounts asking an old Neapolitan, "is this a one way street?" because only one car could fit. Answer: "If you're going up, it's one-way going up. If you're going down, it's one-way going down."
3.) Driving in Siracusa with, again, "two"-way streets with only room for one car (we are talking 6" on either side), coming to an intersection not on my map. I'm to the south facing north; another car is facing me going south on the north side; a third car is going west to my direct right. PANIC. The west-bound guy got out of his car and made crazy gestures!! I just wanted to get outta there and turned left. But the intersection wasn't big enough, which I was aware of in that kind of slow-motion dream-like awareness that you have when you trip over something, and I intentionally/unintentionally scraped the whole left back fender on the corner wall. After a second or two, I realized the guy who'd gotten out of his car had been gesturing to try to get me to back up and re-position myself for a 'wider' turn.. but I'd been too nervous to listen to him because..
4.) For about a half-hour we had been followed by some young buck along deserted roads. He'd come up reaaalll close, and I'd pull over to let him pass only to find him slowing down for us a few hundred yards ahead, and we played cat&mouse like this for a while. I even caught him looking in his rear-view mirror and combing his hair.. no doubt to make a better impression on his "2 chicks vacationing" prey! After a while he gave up. Dunno what he thought he was gonna get up to with 2 of us!!
5.) Looking at a map and calculating distance to nearest likely lodging town about an hour. Being a flatlander, I didn't "see" a huge mountain range, so it took us 3+ hours and was WAY after dark by the time we got to the town, through unlit, woodsy, poorly-maintained and barely-traveled mtn. roads. Luckily there was room at the "inn" (only space avail. in a 4-star hotel! -but they gave us a cheap rate and even fed us although the dinner service was basically over at that point). We didn't make a v. good impression to the other 'fine dining'-type guests! We'd had no idea that the town was a chi-chi resort.

So anyway the point of all this is.. that it must be a question of age. What used to be 'adventure' is now to be avoided. And.. it's not really the *driving* per se that bugs me.. it's the fear of not finding adequate parking, or getting into tight spots like in Siracusa and doing some damage to me/my car or to someone else. I'm happy to drive anywhere where parking is assured and I know I can get easily from pt. A to pt. B.. but that's about 5% of my desired destinations.

I "should" be able to drive to Rome, with all its crazy roads and traffic.. but I just cringe at the thought of finding myself out of my depth anymore. I worry about becoming an "old lady". If gas were cheaper I might embark on a campaign of immersion and desensitization. If my 81-y.o. Roman MIL can do it, so should I. A 'normal" Italian wife would drive DH to his ultrasound kidney-stone treatments in the center of unfamiliar and hideously-congested Florence; I just couldn't step up to the plate and he takes the train.

Now the occasional scorpion in the house I can deal with! They are non-poisonous here, but my first sighting did put me in shock; now I just whisk them out. Same with garden snakes.. I think they are cool. DH is petrified.

DH also has an extreme fear of heights, which manifested itself when we got some Celtics tickets in the highest row in Boston Garden. I found these actually more comfortable since there was the whole uppermost concourse level behind us and we had a nice "table" with normal chairs and floor instead of the rigid regular seating and steep steps. When I leaned forward at all, DH kept yanking me back from the glass balcony barrier (in front of our table), thinking I was going to somehow fantastically pitch myself downward onto the court!
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Old 02-10-2008, 10:57 AM   #69
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if i was straight the bumper sticker on the back of my pickup would say "no fear."

but since i'm gay, the bumper sticker on my convertible says "i am phobialess!"
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Old 02-10-2008, 11:14 AM   #70
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Heights, nuff said.

Needles: I nearly faint when they take blood.

Social situations: When I have to go to a party or other situation where there are a number of people I don't know, I really have to steel myself to go.
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Old 02-10-2008, 11:19 AM   #71
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if i was straight the bumper sticker on the back of my pickup would say "no fear."

but since i'm gay, the bumper sticker on my convertible says "i am phobialess!"
OK, now i get it - just slow. You're Fahhhbulous/Phobia less. kinda a stretch....or a different accent.
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Old 02-10-2008, 11:23 AM   #72
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if i was straight the bumper sticker on the back of my pickup would say "no fear."

but since i'm gay, the bumper sticker on my convertible says "i am phobialess!"
You clever cetacean, you.
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Old 02-10-2008, 12:03 PM   #73
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OK, now i get it - just slow. You're Fahhhbulous/Phobia less. kinda a stretch....or a different accent.
it is less of a stretch if you talk without using your lips in uppitycrust, um, i mean, upperclass phasion, using the centrally "rounded" vowel aka the schwa signified by "ə" as in: fəbulous => phəbeələs

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You clever cetacean, you.
why no officer, i didn't think my bumper sticker violated traffic regulations so i don't know why you are issuing me a cetacean. but if you would only face your fears and believe in yourself, you could be phobialess too.
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Old 02-10-2008, 01:09 PM   #74
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I had a time when I was afraid to fly so I got a tape that was supposed to cure you of it and it worked .
Many in this thread mentioned fear of flying - I am surprised at the number, but not ridiculing anyone's fears.

Have any of those considered tackling it head-on and taking flying lessons? Not to get a pilot's license, which is a lot of work, (not to mention expense) but to get to the point where you understand why the machine flies and experience controlling and landing it? Even to the point of a solo flight?

Admittedly this is from someone who began flying lessons at age 15 with lawn-mowing money and has never experienced that phobia and therefore does not understand it.
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Old 02-10-2008, 01:25 PM   #75
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Many in this thread mentioned fear of flying - I am surprised at the number, but not ridiculing anyone's fears.

Have any of those considered tackling it head-on and taking flying lessons? Not to get a pilot's license, which is a lot of work, (not to mention expense) but to get to the point where you understand why the machine flies and experience controlling and landing it? Even to the point of a solo flight?

Admittedly this is from someone who began flying lessons at age 15 with lawn-mowing money and has never experienced that phobia and therefore does not understand it.
Thanks Walt34. My flying phobia began after an episode of wake turbulence and several scary flights in small planes made it worse. I have in fact improved significantly in recent years, mostly because I have become involved in patient safety and have studied human factors and reliability science, often working with flight crews. When my flights encounter turbulence nowadays, my mantra is "I'm much safer in this plane than I would be as a patient in the hospital".

Now we'll have a deluge of people who are afraid of going to hospital!
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Old 02-10-2008, 01:28 PM   #76
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condoms..... the box says one size fits all and i always find them to big. i keep getting trauma ha ha ha

Actually, they can be ordered on-line in various sizes, including smaller. I only know that because someone told me!!! I swear!
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Old 02-10-2008, 01:31 PM   #77
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Oh yeah....one of my phobias is SPIDERS!!!! Can't hang with some big 'ol hairy arachnids....ugh!

I guess I'm kinda skeered of dying, too.
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Old 02-10-2008, 02:32 PM   #78
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When I lived in a remote cabin in Alaska, I discovered my unreasoning fear of bears. I made many solo hikes 1.5 miles down to the RR tracks and back, carrying my worldly goods through virgin forest, bells ringing on my pack in the hopes it would scare the bears away. The many piles of bear poop on the trail made me even more scared. At least none of them had bells mixed in.
Then we went into Anchorage and saw a movie. It had a cartoon first, of Bongo the Circus Bear. I nearly passed out when I realized that I remembered reading that Little Golden Book when I was a child, and feeling so sorry for Bongo when the wild bears made fun of him and hurt his feelings. Scenes from the book flashed in my memory that weren't even in the movie.
Two days later when we hiked back into the cabin I realized my phobia of bears was gone.
Years later when I was alone at the place watching a grizzly through the window, I was scared but in a reasonable way, not a phobia.
What a stupid way to get a phobia - a Little Golden Book!
Did you read Bongo as a child? Maybe that's your problem?!
I'd love to hear more about living in that remote Alaskan cabin!

No, didn't read Bongo as a child.....

My bear fear started years ago before a trip to the BWCA. DW mentioned hearing about a bear attack on the radio so I did a Google search to see if I could find some info. What I found were dozens and dozens of internet sites about bears/bear attacks, products to prevent bear attacks, info on avoiding bear attacks, sensationalistic stories about bear attacks, etc. And I read and read and read........ until I worked myself up into being worried about bears while camping in bear country!

I'm OK all day. But at night, laying there in the tent trying to go to sleep, I'm a neverous Nelly. I usually sleep on the left and have laid out by my left hip a canister of pepper spray, an air horn, firecrackers and a cig lighter.......just in case. We've had bears in camp at night but never actually had one touch the tent, at least that I'm aware of.

I think it's related to being inside the tent and not being able to see around me. You start to focus on sounds and become hyper-sensitive.

We follow all the rules for sleeping in areas where camp raiding bears are common. No food in the tent. No clothes you were wearing while cooking in the tent. Set up tent a good distance from where you cook and the tree you hang your food in.

The thing we usually don't do which would eliminate most concerns is travel in a large group. Frequently it's just DW and myself. And we like to split up and spend time alone. She might be sitting on a rock at water's edge sketching or updating her journal. I might be off somewhere fishing. And one or two people are much more prone to a bear attacks than a group.

But, I deal with it. And we're going back next summer!
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Old 02-10-2008, 05:43 PM   #79
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Old 02-10-2008, 07:08 PM   #80
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Many in this thread mentioned fear of flying - I am surprised at the number, but not ridiculing anyone's fears.

Have any of those considered tackling it head-on and taking flying lessons? Not to get a pilot's license, which is a lot of work, (not to mention expense) but to get to the point where you understand why the machine flies and experience controlling and landing it? Even to the point of a solo flight?

Admittedly this is from someone who began flying lessons at age 15 with lawn-mowing money and has never experienced that phobia and therefore does not understand it.
I thought about doing that some years ago, about the time I started riding motorcycles. But I never followed through. I know the fear is not rational. I assume it has something to do with that feeling of lack of control. For example, I never liked being a passenger on a motorcycle but I don't have a problem with driving one myself.
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