What Are You Afraid Of?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

Behind my tough and bespectacled geek exterior lies a little kid, frightened to death of certain things. Big scary things, like:

• Bees. Guaranteed to make me run away, screaming like a girl. I will take a bullet for my wife. I would step into traffic to save her. Bees? You're on your own, Baby!
• Heights. I get dizzy above 18". If you have anything you need done that's between here and there, I'll help you out. Otherwise, get out your Yellow Pages.
• Driving in unfamiliar places. I have a horrible sense of direction. I could get lost in my own driveway. Throw me downtown in a strange city, and I'll be holding up traffic, going the wrong way down one-way streets, and botching parallel parking jobs in no time.
• Planes. I've taken a hundred flights. I've crashed exactly zero times. Just know that even though I'm acting calm and politely giving you the window seat, inside my stomach's in knots and I could care less about being polite. You're just extra padding between me and the window I'm too scared to look out of.

What have you secretly been afraid of for years, and haven't had the guts to tell anyone? You can tell me; I'll keep it a public Internet secret, I promise.

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