Fear

Everyone has fears. It's natural. It's also natural for friends and family of the fearful to make fun of them. For instance: one of the first times we went to the pit this summer, it was me, Bro and friends we gre up with who are also brothers, JP and Junior. (I'll call him Junior because he's the youngest by far in our group of friends. So young that I used to babysit him. Sidenote- you are officially OLD when kids you babysat are now in college) The boys were all fishing, I was just floating- catchin some rays. Bro had this innertube that's like a lazyboy recliner meets innertube meets bass boat. It's for fisherman to sit in, float, and still be able to fish. It even comes with flippers! Well Junior was a little jealous, so he folded up a raft and sat on it so he could sit up and fish too. JP fished from the shore until it got too hot, then he came in the water and we shared a raft, kicking out to where Bro and Junior were fishing in the center of the pond. On our way out, something BIG jumped out of the water between us and our brothers. Immediately Bro and Juniors legs came flying out of the water like they were in shark infested waters. Bro said "I knew watching Deep Blue Sea before coming out here would be a mistake!" JP and I, of course, laughed our heads off and ridiculed our pansy ass younger brothers for being such wienies.

Logically, we know there's a better chance we'll invent the cure for baldness, a diet pill that actually works and a money tree than we have of getting attacked by a shark in the pit. It's fresh water for starters. Hundreds of miles from any ocean. So clear you could see the shark coming for you if there was indeed a shark. But the human mind is a funny thing... your heart still pounds, your mind races and you want your feet out of the water and where you can see them!

It's bad enough when a rouge blue gill nips at my fingers or toes- somehow I seem to be the only person out of the bunches of us that have swam at the pit that has gotten bit. Lucky Me. Rouge blue gills aside,
I've never had more than slight, passing anxiety at the pit. Until recently. I decided (once I paid my hefty library fines...) that I need to start reading more classic novels. I started with Lonesome Dove by Larry McGurty. I've never seen the movie, or tv show or whatever it was- just heard it was a great book about an important time in US history. It was a good book, a long book, but a good one. Well it's also kind of graphic. In one part, a woman was kidnapped- her abductor told her he would cut a hole in her stomach, tie her guts to a stick, drag her body 40 feet away and leave her to watch the coyotes eat her guts until she dies if she tried to run away. Yeah. I don't really know why I told you that, other than it was pretty inventive. And she didn't run away! Well the scene that really got me, just gives me the willies, is a bunch of cowboys were herding cattle to Montana from Texas and they had come to the first river they needed to cross. During the chaos of the river crossing, a young boy somehow rode his horse into a nest of copperhead snakes in the middle of the river and was bitten a dozen times. He died.

Now I don't like snakes to begin with, in fact I flat out hate them. Can't even hardly watch a tv show if there are snakes on it. I'm having a hard time even typing the S word! So now, whenever I'm in the water, I'm not worried about sharks, I'm worried about swimming through a nest of copperhead snakes! Stupid Larry McGurty and his stupid classic American novel!