Idea #40: irrational fears.

I have a lot of rational fears, mostly politically-related with a few tangible ones. But I don't have a lot of irrational fears. I can only think of two, actually...

One is sidewalk grates. I know they wouldn't install them if there was even the slightest risk of someone falling through, but I cannot bring myself to walk across a sidewalk grate no matter how hard I try. Grates do not belong in the SIDEWALK. (There are also the fears of getting heels stuck in the grates or creepy men looking up your skirt from under the sidewalk, but my fear just has to do with falling through. I have no other fears of falling or heights. Go figure.)

The other is busted balloons, especially if they are located near sewers. When I was too young to be reading such a thing, I read "It" one weekend. Have you read "It"? It's a big freakin' book, especially to someone not old enough to be reading such a thing. A big freakin' FREAKY book. It freaked me out so much that after getting halfway through it the first night and finding a reasonable stopping point (by reasonable I mean "no one has died in the last five pages, maybe I should stop for now"), I plowed through the whole second half the following night. I think I slept three hours over those few days of reading the book, and not much more in the weeks that followed.

Anyway. You may or may not know that the story involves a scary clown, balloons and sewers, among other things. The Monday after I stayed up all weekend reading that creepy book I was walking to school and passed a sewer drain on the corner of my street. And yes, there was a busted red balloon right there at the mouth of the sewer drain.

My heart actually stopped for a moment.

To this day I still think of that when I see a popped balloon on the side of the road, and usually when I walk past that sewer drain when I'm home. Say what you will about Stephen King, past present or future, but in my... um, book, haha, he goes down as one of the best storytellers in American history. Anytime I see a used copy of a book I haven't read yet, I buy it and end up thoroughly enjoying it - even the sci-fi stuff, which I normally can't get interested in unless "FRAK!" or Nathan Fillion is involved. I just wish he would stop writing those awful columns for Entertainment Weekly.

Come to think of it, because of King I may have a third irrational fear: Derry, Maine.

Ironically, though, I have no fear of clowns other than maybe the freaky Cirque du Soleil clown. (Annoyance from clowns, on the other hand...)