Dread

It's Halloween! Instead of another terrible ghost story, I decided to write some real life scary stories (plus, I couldn't get my last story finished in time). But then I remembered that to tell scary stories, you need to go out and get into scary situations and I ... don't do ... anything. Then I was going to write about something I have a fear of (you know, without getting too personal, or deep) and my experiences with it. Then, as I was writing about roller coasters (it sounded cooler than needles), I realized most of my fear comes in the form of dread, fearing what is to come once I get on the ride, and not actually during the ride (and all of those stories were starting to sound the same, and boring). Actually, once the ride starts, I'm pretty okay. So, I scrapped some of those roller coaster stories and added in a couple more stories that start with dread and end with "meh" and packaged it all together here for the final installment of this stupid Halloween special.


Needles
I finally got a flu shot last month (or was it earlier this month?). My job has offered free flu shots since I've started working there 5 years ago. Basically, I dread needles so much that I've refused free flu shots, which is insane because I try to take advantage of every other free thing in my life. I've gotten shots before, I've given blood before, but none of that has done anything to quell my fear of a tiny piece of metal entering my skin for a split second, applying the slightest pinch to my arm, if I feel it at all. And the worst part is that I'm not even sure if needles are made of metal because I've refused to look at them everytime. Fuck needles.

"Alien"
No better moment, in my life, symbolizes that feeling of dread you get when you know someone is going to die in a horror movie than the time I was watching "Alien." When I was around 12 or 13 years old, I got really into horror movies for a couple of months. My family would go to Blockbuster about once a week and I would pick out a different horror movie. During this phase, I managed to watch a couple of Friday the 13th movies, one or two of the Halloween movies, and a bunch of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (a favorite series of mine). Then, my dad suggested "Alien." I'd seen both of the "Predator" movies so I thought, why not. At this time as well, I was walking home from school and I was basically home alone for a couple hours. So, one afternoon as I'm home alone, I popped in the cassette and started watching. Well, right after the alien bursts from the guy's chest, it runs off and the crew goes to look for it in this pitch black spaceship. So I'm watching the movie, knowing someone is going to die, that the alien is going to jump out of the dark and kill another crew member. Well, the moment is tense for a minute, two minutes, three minutes. Then a cat jumps out. Then another minute passes. And then another minute. And nothing is happening, the crew is still searching the ship and no one is dead yet. Then another tense moment. And another. Then my house phone rings and I jump. I hang up on the telemarketer and at that point I've just said "Fuck it" and I popped out the movie. To this day, I've yet to go back and watch the rest of that movie.

Eejanaika

 As I said at the beginning, I really am terrified of roller coasters. Somehow though, this did not stop me from riding the three roller coasters at Fuji-Q Highland. Probably because I have the self-confidence of a 12 year old ("just get on the ride, Alan, people are watching"). But that's an issue I'll deal with insert date of death here. Eejanaika is definitely one of those rides I would never ride on my own - a cart-less roller coaster. I'm standing in line, scared as well as surprised that I wasn't physically shaking. You know, regular dread. As we are in line, though, we pass this plaque on the wall

So my dread level just jumped. Not only do I hate roller coasters, but, at the time, I've still never been on one that does a single flip and now I'm about to get on one that holds the current world record. But there's still plenty of line left and by the time we get to the front, my dread has dropped back down to "Well, I'm already here, might as well just get on the ride." We get strapped into our seats and it's weird sitting alone in just a chair. I guess there's something just a little comforting when you're in a cart and someone is next to you, about to share this horrible experience with you. But I'm in the seat and waiting for this to be over with when the floor drops from under me. Some backstory: I've always been tall. I'm not bragging, just a fact. Unless it's a bar stool, I've always been able to touch the ground while sitting. Since Elementary school, that far back. So, being able to now dangle my feet is very, very unnerving. And my dread has jumped back up so far that my brain is now racing, "What the hell are you doing, Alan? You don't like roller coasters. This is the stupidest thing you've ever done." Then the ride started and we begin that ascent 90% of roller coasters have - except we're doing it BACKWARDS. As we go up, I can start to hear people screaming, but I can't tell we've started to drop yet because I can't see what's going on in the front. My only view is the ground as my chair has now unlocked from the bar and the only direction I can look is straight down. All I can do now is wait and wait for the eventual drop. After that, the ride was fun. I enjoyed the flips and turns. Oh, and it also turns out that the harness does give some wiggle room because during one of the flips, my ass left the seat for a bit and when I came back down, I landed with my nuts scrunched up against that part of the seat that comes up and separates your left leg from your right. And, if you were curious, you can probably find a seat-view video on Youtube, but here's a video I took from the ground

"Uncle's Taxi Ride" Behind the Scenes

Years ago, on a night like tonight, I'm sitting on my bed staring at a white page with black, Times New Roman 12 point font on my laptop screen. I've spent the past 2 weeks writing "Uncle's Taxi Ride" for a contest, and the past 2 hours just staring at the screen. I've already re-read it several times (even aloud), corrected the spelling and grammar errors, and even written out the contest entry email (which was basically just, "My name is Alan, here's my entry"). All I need to do is click that "Send" button. Yet I haven't been able to do that for 2 hours. I just keep staring at it. Because this is it. This is MY work that that I'm submitting to be judged by people I've never met. It isn't sharing my stories that scare me, I've done plenty of that for class and I've gotten a little more comfortable with it by writing them all here. I think what I dread the most is not receiving acknowledgement for my work. As much as it shouldn't matter, as much as I say it doesn't matter, it really does matter. That's probably why I never hesitated to turn in class work, because at least the grade would be some sort of recognition of my work, good or bad. But in a contest, they could just throw my work on the side and I'd never hear from them again. And I guess that's what I dreaded the most. The worst part, I go through the same thing every time. I'm working on getting over it, or at least toning it down so I can get it submitted in an hour (I got better things to do than stare at a screen, that's a lie, I really don't)