your house? Everytime you here a siren do you crawl under the bed in case it is chasing a criminal into your abode? When you here strange noises do you quickly grab a shotgun, jack a shell into the chamber and start hunting strangers?


Do you want an honest answer, because you might not like it. Yes, sirens make me jump. Loud cars make me jump. I don't crawl under the bed, but my heart pounds. I don't own a gun, but if I hear a noise, I check it out.

I was taught to be afraid, which is a bad thing. My father moved here to St. Louis from a country town where you threw your front door open and had no fear of your neighbors or anything else. He was so paranoid upon moving here he promptly instilled fear in his children based on his own fear. He didn't mean to, and I know that now, but I've fought against it for years, only making little breakthroughs and thinking I've won, to have something else new take me back two steps.

Fear is a good thing, it keeps us alive. Irrational fear invoked by strange events needs to be analysed and statistically evaluated as rational or hysteria. Your chances of a plane landing on your house is much greaater by pilots who suffer a heart attack in a small plane than terrorists aiming at you. So please explain why your irrational fear of terrorists require me to kiss some govt flunkies ass to get where I am going. Not picking on you, just trying to have you think unintended consequences.


Fear is a good thing if it is in moderation, and not in the form of panic. I agree there. I also know my fear of a plane crashing into my house was irrational. I stated that. I also dealt with my counselor about it in great detail. Unfortunately, it was a major thing, 9/11 and it invoked many irrational fears in many people, not just me. I don't require you to do anything, I simply said the extra security measures give me some degree of comfort.

I know you aren't picking on me, I know you want me to think about it. But I have. I thought about planes, planes crashing, air safety, 9/11 for months and months before I was finally able to get past it and live normally. Maybe I have too much trust in the people who are there to protect us, but I'd rather trust them than fear them, if that makes any sense.

I deal with my fears, every day, of many things. And I've come a long way, really, in some of them. But the trauma of 9/11 still remains one of the worst things I've encountered, and seen and lived through, and I suspect it always will, unless I live to see something inherently worse.

Nightowl >8#