Irrational fears
Today I had to have some blood drawn*. This is a relatively simple, everyday procedure--and it nearly threw me into a full scale panic attack.
Granted, I have small, hard-to-find veins, so having blood drawn has been sort of painful in the past. However, while a collapsed vein hurts, it is not nearly as bad as, say, falling down the stairs--and I have no pathological fear of stairs**.
This got me thinking about my other irrational fears. Minus the needles, which I understand is pretty common, I didn't get any of the normal ones. I could make a public speech on a high platform in a room with snakes and spiders, nude, without batting an eye.
On the other hand, a few days ago, I saw a book recommendation that intrigued me. I hopped over my my library's website, hoping to Link+ it, and I found, to my delight, that our library actually had a copy in stock, rare for fiction. I walked over to the library, checked the call number, looked it up on the map--and paused to consider whether or not I actually wanted it.
You see, the book in question was on the seventh floor of the seven floor stacks. I seriously reconsidered checking it out at this point. The seven floor stacks, a marvel of engineering, fit seven floors worth of book shelves into the former courtyard of our three story library. They are quiet lovely to look at, as they are in front of a giant bank of windows, and hold at least hundred thousand books.
The floor also shakes when you walk on it.
Now I know that this a deliberate design feature, to make the stacks earthquake safe, and while I am certainly not petite, I realize that my weight pales in comparison to that of 20,000 feet of fully-laden shelving. The stacks will not fall down. Yet the whole time I am up there, I can not help but feel my imminent doom approaching. I picture the tidal wave of books cascading downward as the floors collapse, one by one.
I am also afraid of the library's sub-basements, but that is perfectly rational. People looking for government periodicals have been know to get lost for weeks and end up accidentally traveling through L-space to an entirely different library.
*No worries, I am not dying. The doc just wanted to do a thyroid screening.
**Admittedly the steep tile ones at Balch make me nervous.
Granted, I have small, hard-to-find veins, so having blood drawn has been sort of painful in the past. However, while a collapsed vein hurts, it is not nearly as bad as, say, falling down the stairs--and I have no pathological fear of stairs**.
This got me thinking about my other irrational fears. Minus the needles, which I understand is pretty common, I didn't get any of the normal ones. I could make a public speech on a high platform in a room with snakes and spiders, nude, without batting an eye.
On the other hand, a few days ago, I saw a book recommendation that intrigued me. I hopped over my my library's website, hoping to Link+ it, and I found, to my delight, that our library actually had a copy in stock, rare for fiction. I walked over to the library, checked the call number, looked it up on the map--and paused to consider whether or not I actually wanted it.
You see, the book in question was on the seventh floor of the seven floor stacks. I seriously reconsidered checking it out at this point. The seven floor stacks, a marvel of engineering, fit seven floors worth of book shelves into the former courtyard of our three story library. They are quiet lovely to look at, as they are in front of a giant bank of windows, and hold at least hundred thousand books.
The floor also shakes when you walk on it.
Now I know that this a deliberate design feature, to make the stacks earthquake safe, and while I am certainly not petite, I realize that my weight pales in comparison to that of 20,000 feet of fully-laden shelving. The stacks will not fall down. Yet the whole time I am up there, I can not help but feel my imminent doom approaching. I picture the tidal wave of books cascading downward as the floors collapse, one by one.
I am also afraid of the library's sub-basements, but that is perfectly rational. People looking for government periodicals have been know to get lost for weeks and end up accidentally traveling through L-space to an entirely different library.
*No worries, I am not dying. The doc just wanted to do a thyroid screening.
**Admittedly the steep tile ones at Balch make me nervous.