Things I Am Not Afraid Of

To be honest, I have been a bit anxious of late.  The things that I am afraid of have been taking up more space in my mind than usual.  For example:

• Doctor visits, injections, and medical tests.  I got my flu shot two weeks ago, and then as soon as I got over the side effects from that (fever, aches, fatigue), one week ago, at an annual exam, I got my decennial tetanus vaccine update. My left arm has been continuously sore for two weeks, and has taken to asking me in a quiet voice "Don't you love me anymore?"  I still have to schedule, among other things, a fasting blood test, and my first ever mammogram.  At least a) it's not a prostate inspection, which would be even less pleasant, and b) I am apparently not yet ancient enough to require my first colonoscopy, so yay!
• Subway train panic.  When I am under stress, my ability to cope with being in an underground tunnel diminishes.  Initially, I only start to sweat when the train stops in the tunnel, even for a few seconds.  Over time, that increases to an adrenaline burst any time the train even slows down to a suspiciously lackadaisical pace.  
• Mistrust of elevators.  I have gone through phases when I would be willing to walk up many stories in quite unpleasant stairwells in order to avoid getting into an elevator.  I am not at that level now, however on a recent visit to my eye doctor I had the misfortune of riding on the freight elevator, which, for some reason, was the one cab which came for me at the time.  It was banged up inside and poorly lit like a Hollywood torture chamber.  I did get in and ride up to the sixth floor, but not without a fair bit of trepidation.

Things came to a head this week when a friend and colleague of mine returned to work after a surgical procedure.  She stopped in my office to chat, and launched into a description of what she had gone through during her recovery process.  She was only moderately graphic, and I'm usually not too bothered by descriptions of medical stuff, but because she's someone I care about I identified just a little too strongly with her experiences and ended up almost fainting.  She said "You should have stopped me!"  and I said "But people I care about are going to have surgeries and I have to learn to deal with it!"  Then I sat on the floor with an ice pack on the back of my neck for a quarter hour, feeling annoyed with myself.

Therefore, for the sake of my self-confidence, let us consider the list of things which I am not afraid of, as follows:

Spiders.  I have no problem sharing space with a moderate number of spiders.  They are playing for my team. They eat the bad bugs.  I don't consider this to be remarkable; after all, this is Toronto.  We are comfortably outside the range of black widow and brown recluse spiders.  The only tarantulas I ever meet are in pet stores or the zoo.  

This doesn't stop many people I know from freaking out about spiders.  At work I am on call to handle eight-legged visitors.  I'll pick up the spider on a piece of cardboard and escort it outside.  One time, when I didn't have any paper handy, I thought I would just scoot the spider into my palm to carry it out the door, but the arachnophobes watching me wouldn't allow it.  They were very insistent that touching the spider would be dangerous.  I humoured them because I was outnumbered.

Heights.  I mean, regular, change-a-lightbulb heights.  I'm not about to sign up for the CN Tower Edge Walk or anything.  But it's surprising to me how many people will absolutely refuse to climb a perfectly stable step-ladder.  In fact, they don't even want to watch me climb a perfectly stable step-ladder.  This came up when the guy who used to change the light bulbs at my work got a new job.  I thought that surely someone else would volunteer to take his place, but it seems that most of the people I work with are genuinely terrified of the idea.  

I ended up doing a bunch of lightbulb-changing myself.  We do have a handyman, but he's not always in the neighbourhood, and sometimes it seems easier to just haul out the 8-foot ladder and take care of business myself rather than try to reach him on the phone and arrange for him to come in.  One of my colleagues got weak in the knees when he came around a corner and saw me up by the ceiling fiddling with a pot light fixture. Others want to "hold the ladder steady" for me, although it's rock solid without any help.  The triangle is the most stable shape in engineering!  But apparently I am a heroic figure for being willing to climb up there.

Public speaking.  Yes, I do get a bit self-conscious.  Maybe I have a flutter of adrenaline when I first stand up to speak.  But it's not the crippling anxiety that so many people face.  It was Seinfeld who said that at a funeral, most people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.  I've never given a eulogy, which would be particularly difficult because of the gravity of the situation, but other types of speeches aren't too bad.

So there you go.  I'm not a totally weak-sauce lily-livered coward.  What feats of bravery can you boast of?