I'm the smaller boy.
While my love of sleeping in tents and enjoying the beauty of nature has not changed, actually doing it kind of has. It wasn't that I grew out of it, exactly. It was just that as I got older, I started to realize a thing or two.
Well, one, really. Out in the woods, opposable thumbs and a smart mouth did not secure my spot of number #1 in the Top of the Food Chain hierarchy. I suppose my dawning sense of mortality combined with a few frightening bear encounters pretty much made me think that perhaps sleeping in a nylon sack with glorified bendy straws for poles isn't exactly... "safe".
Quite possibly one of my biggest fears...
Not that this has stopped me from doing it, of course. Every once in awhile stupidity wins out, like that time I thought it was perfectly reasonable to be wandering around Chinatown at two in the morning. Drunk. By myself.
That being said, ML and I are heading up to the Finger Lakes next month to spend a week in the woods with some friends. However, we're not doing the nylon sack and bendy-straw-poles thing this time, because we're grown-ups and there's just not enough room for all the booze we plan on bringing. This time, we're playing it classy and rented a house. On a lake.
On a lake. Oh. Fuck.
Fuck it. I'm not leaving the house.
If there is one type of the place where the human ranking plummets when it comes to Top of the Food Chain, it's bodies of water. For example, oceans may be beautiful but those waves are just a rhythmic Siren's call of death. Who knows what the fuck lurks under that murky water?
I do. My bloated, blue-lipped demise, that's what.
Not only are there all sorts of things that could potentially eat my limbs off, like sharks and the Loch Ness Monster, there are also a shit load of other things that will sting the ever loving fuck out of you or bite you and make your skin fall off in sheets or something.
Aww, look it's so cute-- OMG IT'S EATING MY FACE!!! I'm staying in the house.
Plus, you can't do basic things in the water that I really, really like to do, like breathing. I don't know about you, but that's fucking important shit to me. I like taking breaths and not having my lungs fill up with water.
Even worse?
Bathing suits. Mother fucking ego-crushing bathing suits. I'm not sure what's worse, wearing a bathing suit or having a lunch date with Jaws.
You brought a snack...
Needless to say, I will still be jumping into that lake with all my fingers and toes crossed that there isn't a giant elusive squid eagerly awaiting to suck out my brain the moment my head goes under.
Because there is absolutely no way can I look like a scared little pussy in my front of my friends. As always, pride is an amazing and powerful motivator for me.
What are your secret (or not-so-secret) fears when it comes to Mother Nature?