Your Greatest Fear #27: Trash-Talking After Butt-Dialing
Today’s guest blog is brought to you by blog visitor, beta reader extraordinaire, and Blank Slate Press selection committee member Ansley. She has a very specific fear to share with you today that I’m going to add to my coda of greatest fears. I have some pretty wacky fears. (Insert horse picture here.) (Insert clown [...]
Best Blog Comments of April 2012
Thank you all who took the time to join the conversation this month, whether it was on the blog or in your personal life. I don’t track comments that you make about the blog in your personal life, though, so as always, I’ll be using comments from the blog to determine my favorites of April. [...]
The Best Hour of Television I’ve Ever Seen
I’ve seen every episode of The Sopranos, Lost, The Wire, Dexter, The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones, some of the most polished hour-long television dramas ever. That said, last night’s episode of Mad Men was the best-written scripted hour of television I’ve ever seen. Those shows all have much in common. Sure, each one [...]
My Greatest Fear #26: Pulling a “Memento”
If you haven’t seen the movie Memento, please stop reading and watch the movie. Back already? Good. In Memento, a character has a memory disorder that causes memories to fade after a few minutes. His wife realizes that he’s not faking the disorder when she asks him to administer her daily insulin shot time every few [...]
My Greatest Fear #25: The Key Breaking Off in the Lock
I have never had a key break off in the lock, and yet the possibility of it happening crosses my mind at least once a week. I’m not even sure why I think this is a thing that can happen. I’m sure it happened once in a movie I saw in my formative years (ages [...]
My Greatest Fear #24: Dropping a Baby
Over Christmas break, I went to see my good friend Bryce, his wife Jody, and their adorable baby Claire. At least, I think their baby is named Claire. At my age, everyone has a baby, and their names all run together. Let’s go with Claire, but it could just as easily be Felicity, Emily, or [...]
My Greatest Fear #23: Losing My Dry Cleaning Ticket
I took some pants to the dry cleaners last Wednesday, and I was given a pink pickup ticket for Friday evening. I’m sure you’ve done this before. If you’re like me, you guard that ticket with your life. I’ve played through the scenario in which I show up to pick up my dry cleaning without [...]
My Greatest Fear #20: Dead Arms
Have you ever woken up from a nap to find that you can’t feel one of your arms? Inevitably, your arm starts to tingle and it wakes up as circulation resumes. But what if it doesn’t wake up? What if it’s been without circulation for too long and it has died? These are the questions [...]
My Greatest Fear #19: Broken Glass in Restaurants
There’s something you should know about ordering drinks with ice at restaurants (that includes you, Liz Lemon, drinker of white wine Sprite spritzers on ice): You might be drinking shards of ice. True story. You see, when you send a waiter to fetch you a glass of water (especially if you say it as I [...]
My Greatest Fear #18: The Sky Is Falling
When I bought my Camry four years ago, I was delighted to find that it had a moonroof. “Perfect,” I thought. “Now I can drive through the country on summer nights with friends, admiring the star-filled sky through my moonroof.” That’s the dream, right? However, very rarely have I actually used the moonroof, much less [...]
My Greatest Fear #17: Getting Attacked in the Shower
I don’t think there’s any place where you feel more vulnerable than the shower. You’re naked. It’s slippery. You can’t hear or see what’s going on in the rest of your house. You’re confined to a very small space with one exit. Your only defensive weapon on hand is your loofah. When people break into [...]
My Greatest Fear #16
Fall is a time for face paint. Every week, thousands of college football fans paint their faces with their teams’ colors. NFL fans do the same. And in a few days, men and women around the country will smear on face and body paint. They’ll walk around looking creepy when they smile from the contrast [...]
My Greatest Fear #15
My Greatest Fear #15: Accidentally putting something on my toothbrush that is not toothpaste. And then trying to brush my teeth with it. Has this ever happened? No. Not once. Not to me, at least. But like any American, I have a number of random tubes of gels and ointments in my bathroom. There may [...]
My Greatest Fear #14: Eyeball Papercuts
I love to drive with the windows down. I don’t use the AC often because a nice breeze is about 10x better. However, I only roll down the two windows in the back of my Camry and the passenger window. The reason? It’s not about the hair. I’m afraid that something will sail into my [...]
My Greatest Fear #13: Unseen Spiders
Okay, I know spiders are a pretty common fear, unlike the rest of my unfounded paranoias. So I was never going to write about it. But something happened to me the other day that made me realize that it wasn’t spiders in general that scare me–if I see a spider on the wall, I dispose [...]
My Greatest Fear #12
The other day, a friend of mine needed to drop off some beer at my place on his way home. I walked outside as he pulled up in his car, realized that there was a tremendous storm happening, and sprinted the rest of the way until I was safe inside. Was it the rain that [...]
My Greatest Fear #11
I consider myself fairly athletic. I currently play soccer, football, and kickball, and I’m in the upper tier of the athletes with whom I play. At my age, having fun while pushing myself a little is what’s important to me. So the sport itself doesn’t even matter that much. However, there is one sport that [...]
My Greatest Fear #10
As long as I can remember, my grandma has lived in the same house. I ate many a pot roast in that house, and tossed many a Andes mint wrapper behind my grandma’s TV (I later learned that she knew I ate her candies but never said a word to my mother…such a good grandma). [...]
My Greatest Fear #9
Did you ever have someone of authority tell you something when you were a child that you now know is absolutely ludicrous, and yet you can’t let go of it? Today’s greatest fear is one of those things. Back in my fourth grade science class, my teacher told us a scary story. She told us [...]
My Greatest Fear #8: Static Electricity
The other day I was doing laundry, and I forgot to put in one of those little magical dryer sheets. When I extracted my fuzzy blanket from the machine, I shocked myself. Then I shocked myself again when I touched a door handle, and again when Biddy tried to get involved in things. It was [...]
My Greatest Fear #7: Popping Balloons
This greatest fear is pretty similar to Greatest Fear #2, opening canisters of Pillsbury dinner rolls. But this one is timely. On April Fool’s Day, I came into my office to find a sign on the bathroom in my office that said it was out of order. I also found a big box on my [...]
My Greatest Fear #6: Piano Bars
I just got a Facebook event invitation to a party a friend of mine is having this weekend. The time and date checked out, so I looked at the location: Jive and Wail, a local Piano Bar. My reaction? Hell no. Before you have an unnecessarily strong reaction to this, please note that I have [...]
My Greatest Fear #5: Getting Stuck to Something Frozen
I know what comes to your mind when you read that headline. It’s that image of the kid with his tongue stuck to the flagpole. I’m not worried about that. I’m not dumb enough to stick my tongue on any frozen surface. Or really any surface. (Okay, any non-female surface.) However, there are frozen things [...]
