What are you scared of?
We’re all scared of something, whether it’s a real something or a something we blow up all out proportion. Most of the time, the more we think about it, the more we scare ourselves. 😀
Me, I’m scairt of…what?
- The local burglars. We live…what: about a mile?…south of a dire, drug-ridden slum. On the east, the ‘Hood runs adjacent to an aging, crime-infested apartment shambles. So we have a pretty high crime rate. Everyone here lives behind deadbolts and burglar alarms and steel security screens.
- Crazies on the road. Every now and again, some hapless driver gets shot because they annoy a fellow homicidal driver. People carry guns around in their cars, and when they get mad, they break the things out and use them.
- Along the same lines: crazy traffic. You have to stay alert every second you’re behind the steering wheel. If you don’t, you will get into a fine crash. Even if you do stay as alert as a cat after a bird, eventually you probably will be rear-ended or side-slammed anyway.
- The vicissitudes of old age. Just now I hurt. Have developed some new ailment that I never heard of. It does hurt, yes. And no one seems to have clue to how to treat it or whether it will go away. The Mayo has suggested a drug that will make me sicker than the disease…so…yeah.
- Doctors. Not my favorite species. And speaking of “just now,” well…just now I’m having wayyy too many dealings with them.
LOL! So it goes.
My mother was scared. Of everything. In particular, she got it into her head that a perp was going to climb up on the roof of their car (which in Sun City was parked under an open carport), open the hatch to the attic, jump up into the attic, walk across a beam to the living room, cut a hole in the ceiling, and jump down into the house. Apparently this actually did happen out there, at least once. It must have been reported in the Sun City newspaperoid.
But….but…if she was so scared of the bogeyman jumping down into the living room from the attic, why not install a burglar alarm in the attic? It would’ve been easy to do.
Weird, though, that I never thought of that until just this minute. Why don’t people think of the obvious?
Probl’y she was afraid my father would pooh-pooh her, tell her she was a lunatic. He was an artist at little-womaning. But if she could show him a news story proving it had happened, surely he could’ve been persuaded. Maybe.
Even SDXB, the Man of Steel, carried a loaded pistol in his car’s glove compartment. Just in case, y’know. And he slept with a shotgun right at hand.
A good thing, despite the implicit paranoia. He needed that shotgun when he got up at 2 in the morning to find a pair of perps had sliced out a window pane and were climbing through the gap into his living room.
Ohhhh well.
I was gonna drive downtown to the Cathedral this morning — it being Sunday — in hopes of picking up old friendships from the choir and…maybe???…even seeing if I can get back on the choir.
Here at the church in uptown central Phoenix our choir director retired. His replacement changed the gist of the choir’s offerings — as was his perfectly reasonable right. The new repertoire was — and is — way, WAY over my head. We had no music teaching where I grew up, in Saudi Arabia. So…I can’t read music unless I can hear it.
That makes it impossible for me to perform with the New! Improved! All Saints choir. Had to drop out.
As it develops, a lot of the folks on the choir did the same: they ended up on the choir at the downtown cathedral. So…I’ve been thinking I would drive down there, sit through the service, and try to schmooze with the choir members a bit. Maybe even get back on the choir.
But…hmmmm…. Maybe not today. Given my current state of decrepitude, it’s just too dangerous to cruise the homicidal streets in the rain. It’s been pouring all night; no sign of a let-up.
Therein lies the barrier to following fellow ex-choir members downtown: “just too dangerous.” You have to park in a covered garage…and I do NOT feel safe there, not even in broad daylight. Certainly would not feel safe walking around there at 10:00 p.m., after choir rehearsal. Maybe if someone would go with me — I could park my car at their house, say — but to go down there alone? Not. So. Much.
So…yeah. An aspect of living in Phoenix scares me so much, I’m afraid to do something I miss terribly and very much want to do.
Scairt!