4 Things I'm Ashamed To Admit I'm Afraid of
1. Yoga - I've never taken a yoga class in my life. Never done a Downward Facing Dog, never carried a rolled-up mat in a special backpack, never chanted in another language. I know lots of dancers take yoga and love it; they claim it helps their technique and stamina and flexibility and that's awesome but I'm so afraid of walking into a class and not knowing what to do. I would totally embarrass myself, I'm sure, which is why I've never gone. You can put me into a ballet class in another country where no one speaks English and I would be fine because I understand the language of ballet but yoga... [shudder]
Namaste.
2. Pop Music - Please don't ask me who Asher Roth is. Or what song Taylor Swift sings. Or which Jonas Brother is which. I have no idea. Not a clue. I am so out of touch with pop music that I only heard a Miley Cyrus song for the first time about two months ago. I'm not afraid of the music itself but of being asked about it and found out for the musical illiterate that I am. I have never pretended to be hip to the music scene but these days, I am so far out of it, the music I like is classified as Oldies. [shudder]
3. Fire - Whenever I leave my apartment, even for a short walk up to the post office, I back up my current WIP onto a jump drive which I carry in my purse. I am so afraid something in my house will catch on fire and explode and then my computer will melt and I will lose all of my work. And since I have a brain like a sieve, I know there isn't any possible way I could recreate it after the fact. I think part of my fear stems from the true story about Ralph Ellison (who wrote "Invisible Man" - not the sci-fi story but the literary novel which won the National Book Award) who lost hundreds of pages of a manuscript in a house fire and was never able to rewrite them. [shudder]
4. Throwing Up - okay, okay, I don't know a single person who actually enjoys this but I have such fear that I would - and have - gladly suffered with horrible stomach pain just to avoid it. I routinely reject food that a normal person would try simply to limit any possible tainting or stomach sensitivity. I am aware of one person (related to me!) who has, in his much younger college days, used vomiting as a means of continuing to party. Yes, he would drink to excess, become too full to drink anymore, then throw up so he could have another beer or 5. Crazy? Ugh. I call it gross. Just thinking about it makes me a little queasy. [shudder]
