Everybody's afraid of something.
I, for example, am terrified of butterflies. I think that you can tell a lot about a person by what frightens them. Of course, there are the usuals- death, public speaking, heights, but nearly everyone also has some strange and unconventional fear, and this is what makes people interesting.
I was talking to the dude who sits next to me at work about this the other day, and I asked him what his unconventional fear was. Puppets? Animatronics? Balloons? Birds? Oh, no- he is afraid of non-human primates. When I asked him why, he explained that their close-to-but-not-quite-human behavior was off-putting, and that their hands and feet especially freaked him out.
Today we continued the conversation, and he talked about how chimpanzees can turn on their owners with no warning or provocation, becoming suddenly violent and uncontrollable. He talked about how quickly and dextrously they move, how they can use doorknobs and simple tools, and their prehensile feet are basically extra hands that they can use to wield tools or deliver blows to their opponents. It's basically impossible to take down a chimp that's coming right for ya, he says, because you have no idea what they're going to do, and they're so much faster than you are. Then they gnaw off your fingers, toes, and genitals before chewing your fucking face off. A 100-lb chimp, he says, is a hell of a lot more formidable an opponent than a 200-lb man.
I am totally no longer okay with monkeys.
I was talking to the dude who sits next to me at work about this the other day, and I asked him what his unconventional fear was. Puppets? Animatronics? Balloons? Birds? Oh, no- he is afraid of non-human primates. When I asked him why, he explained that their close-to-but-not-quite-human behavior was off-putting, and that their hands and feet especially freaked him out.
Today we continued the conversation, and he talked about how chimpanzees can turn on their owners with no warning or provocation, becoming suddenly violent and uncontrollable. He talked about how quickly and dextrously they move, how they can use doorknobs and simple tools, and their prehensile feet are basically extra hands that they can use to wield tools or deliver blows to their opponents. It's basically impossible to take down a chimp that's coming right for ya, he says, because you have no idea what they're going to do, and they're so much faster than you are. Then they gnaw off your fingers, toes, and genitals before chewing your fucking face off. A 100-lb chimp, he says, is a hell of a lot more formidable an opponent than a 200-lb man.
I am totally no longer okay with monkeys.