What Are you Afraid of?

Fears. We all have them. Some of them are justified. I mean, who isn’t afraid of the dark, of spiders, or of things that go bump in the night? Sure, some of our fears are a bit irrational, but I’m here to tell you that even the irrational ones are real to the person suffering from said trepidation.

I once heard a woman on a talk show talk about her phobia of . . . macaroni. Now, personally, the carb lover that I am, I haven’t ever met a piece of macaroni that I feared or that I didn’t find tasty, but I can only imagine that at some time this woman had a bad macaroni experience. (Don’t worry, I’m not even going to try to guess what it was.)

Needless to say, I have my own misunderstood fear. Frankly, most people unjustly chuckle at my phobia or at least they chuckle at the situation from which my phobia stemmed. Not that I personally see Zoo-phobia as a laughing matter.

Yes, I’m afraid of going to the Zoo.

You might be thinking that maybe I could have been one of those children who fell, or was tossed, into the Gorilla cage. But nope, my mom never wanted to get rid of me that bad—or at least not on the days we were at the zoo. You might think I just happened to get lost at a zoo as a child, but nope, mom always held my hand extra tight.

My fear didn’t even stem from a childhood event. Yes, it was years ago, but I was an adult. A full-fledge adult, I might add. We-- my husband, my little girl and I—were visiting the Los Angeles Zoo. And for first time in my life, I was . . . well …felt up by a stranger.

Now, my husband, the man who had vowed before God and our friends to love, honor and protect me, was standing right beside me during this assault. But like the rest of the crowd, he was bent over from the waist down having one of those real belly laughs. (Okay, I’ll admit the villain of this crime was a lot larger than my 6-foot husband and probably outweighed him by a couple of tons, but still, I expected more from the man I married.)

Now, when we first approached the elephant exhibit, I was excited. (But not that kind of excited!) The big guy was strutting his stuff, prancing around for the crowd, his trainer doing a talk about their power and charm. When the big brut started moving in my direction, I instantly became aware of the low fence, but hey, my thought was that for the first time in my life I was actually going to get to touch an elephant. I had somehow neglected to realize that if I could touch him, he could also touch me.

Now, like I said, it was several years ago. I was young, thin, and filled out my little t-shirt rather nicely. At least, the elephant thought so. (But let me ask you . . . did you know elephant trunks have suction cups in them?)

Anyway, there I stood, all four feet eleven inches with my right D-cup boob being suctioned by a male elephant in front of hundred or so laughing-so-hard-they-cried people. I seriously considered slapping the rude perpetrator, but the trainer had just explained about how elephants could pick up over a thousand pounds with their trunks. Right then, I had a terrible vision of this elephant tossing me over his shoulder and taking me back to his pad for some hanky panky. And hey, he had completely skipped first base, gone straight for second, and quite frankly, I was in no mood for home runs.

But unfortunately, I was pretty much without options. So I stood there and let him have his jollies. It took the trainer zapping the guy before he finally released me. But did you know their trunks are wet and kind of slimy? I didn’t. Well, not until I looked down at my right boob to see the large ring he’d left. Oh, and the ring stained the baby blue Tee and all day people were pointing at me and laughing.

Amazingly, I have forgiven my husband, but whenever he says… “Why don’t we go to the zoo?” I start feeling panic and then get a strange sensation in my right boob.

So there you have it. Now, you know what I’m afraid of and why. But what about you? What are your fears and phobias? Care to share? And please, if I can tell you about being molested by an elephant, surely you can tell me anything. Even if it is a fear of macaroni.

Crime Scene Christie

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