Fear Factory

The Halloween spirit has risen up from the grave. Like a tradition-obsessed ghost, this holiday spirit haunts us, ready to possess our bodies, making us surf through every sub-genre of horror film splattered across the stream-o-sphere, as we gobble down every sub-flavor of pumpkin.

We creep closer to our darkest, deepest fears, celebrating every jump-scare along the way. As I descend into the mysterious cellar of my own haunted memories, I eventually must face my top three fears:

• Heights

• Confrontation

• Fruit

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. My fears seem quite run-of-the-mill and boring, but let me first tell you the tale of each, and and I dare you not to shiver in terror...

Heights

We start with the very common phobia of heights. I cannot go near a 30-story window, much less the 2nd-floor balcony at my work with out feeling the irrational tingles that I could suddenly faint, with the wind somehow sweeping me up into the air and over the edge.

I often attribute this fear to one of my first visits to the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the world (at the time). At a very young age, my family took one of our semi-regular excursions to downtown Chicago, a city with the perfectly visual profile (a skyline I still enjoy [as seen here]).

At the age of 5, I could barely comprehend the view from the observation deck across the city (and suburbs [what we would eventually call Chicagoland {this is the last aside -- starting now}]).

At that very moment, as I looked down the 100+ floors to the street below, my dad snuck up behind me, pushed me towards the window, then grabbed me, shouting, “saved your life!” So funny. So, so, so funny. I promise you, my resulting tears came from tremendous laughter.

Once I finished stuffing all my internal organs back down my throat, I eventually made it home and managed to survive all of life’s dangers for many years. I think. I don’t remember. I most likely blacked out, and just regained consciousness about ten minutes ago.

Confrontation

Any time I sense a potential confrontation with a stranger, I feel immediate terror.

Confrontation with family is another matter. When it comes to close family, I happily choose confrontation, because that’s just good, clean family fun. Kind of like pretending to push your kids off a building. That kind of family fun.

Confrontation with strangers? I typically take a pass. Mostly because I’m terrible at it. When I need to confront someone I don’t know, first, I do everything in my power simply to not confront them at all.

I convince myself their behavior really doesn’t affect me, even if they just opened their car door, denting my new car. I make excuses for them, like they must have a very important personal emergency forcing them to stop at the hot dog stand for armful of chili-slathered meat sticks.

Then, when all else fails, and I can’t help but speak up about the damage to my car, they glare at me, outraged that I could be so rude as to point out their obviously understandable mistake. How dare I victimize them in such a public space.

Of course, the big worry comes from the fear that I might set into motion this person’s “final straw”, which leads to more dents to prove some kind of point using lunkhead logic. I imagine I have experienced my own “final straw” moments in the past. I can’t say for sure, though, as I blacked out when I was five, and I just regained consciousness ten minutes ago.

Fruit

Finally, let’s talk about the big scare -- my ongoing precarious relationship with fruit. As far as I can tell, I experienced several key incidents in my youth, fraught with uncertainty and sugary terror.

It all began with a parade of weddings and anniversaries at all the classy Polish reception halls in Chicago like The Lido and Przybylo’s “Home of the White Eagle.” These venues had perfected the quick service family style service, slapping down platters of weeks-old beef drowned in gravy, previously-green beans, and slurp-able mashed potatoes, all finished off with a plastic bowl of can-dumped fruit cocktail.

This healthy delight contains 75% syrup, along with a shameless gift to the chopped pear industry. Disgusting. Everyone seemed to dive into it like it gave them special powers. As for me, I refused to go near that clear liquid syrup. I always worried that juice would suddenly, without notice, swoop into the air, and soak the entire banquet hall.

My fruit phobia then morphed into its next stage during grade school lunch, where all us little kiddies squeezed onto cramped onto long lunch tables. Each classmate came with his or her own bagged lunch, typically a sandwich, featuring some kind of deli meat that apparently had no problem sitting in a locker for 4 - 5 hours without ever spoiling. My sandwich came with a nice bag of Fritos, but other kids came locked an loaded with fruit. They would then sink their teeth into every bite, recklessly squeezing out every squirt they could, haphazardly shooting streams of juicy terror directly into my sandwich, rendering it null and void.

My fruit-traumatized psyche took a final destructive blow when my family discovered my growing fear of fruit. As evident from my Sears Tower incident, my dad mastered the art of teasing, so when I refused to eat fruit, he would wave the banana in my face, insisting I take a bite, like some sort of health-nut drill sergeant.

His playful nature confused me when my fight or flight would kick in, because he used the same tone when he would jokingly pretend to throw a dirty rag at us, or other times, when he would actually throw a dirty rag at us. Instead of giggling at the rag, I would scream and flee with each fruit-threat, so I could understand how he thought it was all in good fun.

In a possible sign of maturity, I eventually managed to eat fruit, even bananas and apples, but never pears or peaches, as they still make me feel like I’m approaching an open balcony at 30 floors up.

I still don’t eat as much fruit as I should, but I suspect I may need to get over it some day if my doctors ever discover my poor choices. Luckily, my current doc keeps giving me good news after my tests, like our most recent conversation:

Doc: You are mostly healthy.

Me: Mostly?

Doc: Your levels are all good. I can’t really see anything to cause concern.

Me: Really? I can still eat ice cream every night?

Doc:

Me: Because that’s what I’m hearing. Continue with the ice cream.

Doc: I don’t know if I would ever say that. You might want to cut back.

Me: But, you said I don’t need to make any changes.

Doc: I suppose I did. But...

Me: I’m sorry. I’m going into a tunnel Khckchchchchchch...

Doc: You still there?

Me:

Doc: Hello?

Me:

Doc: I know you’re there. I can hear you eating. Where are you?

Me: (mouth full) Definitely not Cold Stone.

I had the opportunity to face one of my fears last week, when I visited my old pal Kevin, who works at Little Caesars HQ in Detroit. Stepping out onto this balcony across from the baseball stadium brought back the tingle-tangles in my nervous system, echoes of my trip to Sears Tower.

If he had offered me pineapple pizza, we may have found ourselves in a serious confrontation.

Maybe that’s exactly what happened, although I can’t say for sure, because I only just regained consciousness about ten minutes ago.