Years ago… My first girl friend had what I thought at the time was a rather unusual phobia. What Nancy feared most, oddly enough, was becoming so nervous that she would burst into flames, or ‘Spontaneously Combust’ thus somehow embarrassing herself in public. Never mind events such as these are extraordinarily rare, often happening to elderly shut-ins and the like. Yet for Nancy, the fear of going up like a human candle was completely real.
Her primary anxiety was during her graduation ceremonies, walking up to collect her diploma, Nancy would be so intensely stressed that suddenly and without warning, she explode like some flaming human torch. Funny thing to me was this highly improbable event caused her great concern not because she would die in a horrible death burning alive, but she mostly feared how this would totally embarrass her in front of her fellow graduating classmates.
Now… We all carry various fears through this life, and some are quite real, while others are more imagined, if not at least very, very unlikely. Yet I often wonder what makes fears like these real to those persons who hold them, not to mention to those who share in their lives. All the same, I sat watching closely for signs of fire, with in enough bottled water on hand to at least calm Nancy’s fears…. just in case.
That night we made it out together alive and unsinged, with a shared laugh between us, the fear gone forever… If only change was always that easy.
