Fear

Confession: When I was a child, I had a fear. I was not afraid of monsters or the dark; I was afraid of teachers – not teachers at school, no, that was expected. I was afraid that my teachers followed me home and hid in my closet or under my bed. I was afraid that they were watching me, watching to make sure that I was as well behaved at home as I was at school.

I suppose at some point I had overheard my teachers saying something like, “I bet she’s just as quiet and sweet at home.” Or my mom saying, “If only she and her brother got along so well.” I don’t remember hearing these things, but I’m sure that they were said and I was a pretty observant kid. So, probably, in my child’s mind, I assumed that my teacher’s were making sure that I was who I was at school. But this fear remained past the preschool or kindergarten years when I had eavesdropped on the adults. In fact well into the latter years of elementary school, I’d check my closet and underneath my bed before I went to bed . . . for teachers.

Most of our fears are completely unfounded – fear of sharks, of flying, of commitment – most are perpetuated by our imaginations and amplified or fabricated stories. We have all heard the facts – that more people die from bee stings than shark attacks, from car accidents than plane crashes, from commitment, well, hardly ever. And yet, this feeling, irrational, stressful, and at times, life altering, persists.

Is it because once every summer you hear some secondhand story about a swimmer who was bitten by a shark or because you just have to watch “Shark Week” on tv? Is it because that patch of turbulence induced images from that news clip last week, or maybe that was Final Destination? Is it because the last time you tried that commitment thing you got your heart broken or because you are just too independent and carefree to commit to someone? (The only ironic thing about this last one is, it seems to be conditioned based on actual experiences, and fiction tends to ease this fear rather than feed it – interesting.)

I figure a healthy respect for sharks and flight and relationships is appropriate. Maybe it is ok to avoid swimming with a school of sharks, to try to be the same person in all environments, or to check under your bed occasionally. But what would you be missing if you never got on an airplane again, never made yourself vulnerable again? Perhaps it’s easier to say, but somehow I suppose we have to realize that we exaggerate and that our teachers really don’t care that much that we are on our best behavior all the time.