Fright Night—What Spooks Us?

The ghosts and goblins of All Hallows’ Eve are lurking in the dark ready to jump out from behind that old dead tree to send shivers of fright down our spines. Since we associate Halloween with scary beings that go bump in the night, it is a good time to talk about what frightens us.

The scene is set for me to talk about the things that scare us. As I sit in my office working on this article, the wind howls around the corner of the house and branches scrape against the window. In fact, the unusual sounds are downright creepy.

Although some of the surveys show slightly different results, I’m going to hone in on ten common fears.

Things that go BOOM in the night.  A lot of folks are scared of storms. Thunder and lightning can shake up the best of us. Throw in a tornado warning complete with a heart-stopping siren, and you can create panic. I used to be terrified of storms, but somewhere along the line, I just learned to respect them and find a safe spot if possible.

Dark and Stormy Nights. No wonder the cliché for the beginning of a story is “It was a dark and stormy night.” Two fears rolled into one. The dark is the most common fear of children. I think that’s because when its dark, you can’t see the monsters in the closet. And you can’t go trick or treating until after dark…

Creepy Crawlers. Let’s face it. Spiders are mean little critters that can give you the kiss of death before you can say “Granddaddy Longlegs.” They all scare me…black widows, tarantulas, or brown recluse…and the only good spider is one that I see first because it will become a ghost spider.

Slithering Sneaky Snakes.  I never saw a snake that I liked. A few weeks ago, I was at a wedding rehearsal dinner where Sedalia’s own “Snake Lady” dressed up as a witch and brought one of her pet snakes in a caldron. Fortunately, I was sitting at the back of the room. Needless to say, I wasn’t one of the people who let the snake slither around my arms.

Crash and burn.  If you are afraid of flying, you have lots of company. As many as twenty-five million people are nervous flyers. I don’t think they are so much afraid of flying as they are of crashing.

Hitchcock’s Vertigo. I have a love/hate relationship with heights. I love looking at scenery far below, but I can freak out if I get too close to a canyon. The spinning sensation makes me feel that I’m just going to topple over the edge, plunging to my death far below.

Hell Hounds. I’ve never really been scared of dogs in general, but I’ve had a couple of close encounters. One time I was handing out some literature door-to-door for a local organization. At one house, I knocked, but no one was home. As I started back to the car, a German shepherd wedged himself between me and the car. I talked really nice to the dog as I slowly backed around him, never turning my back. “Nice doggy. Aren’t you a pretty boy? Are you having a good day, little doggie?”

Coffin Claustrophobia. Nobody likes to feel like they are in a tight spot where the air is hard to breathe. I’ve known fearless men who would climb a high wire or chase storms, but put them on an elevator and their knees begin to knock.

Evil Drilling Dentist. Some people treat the dentist like he’s Dr. Frankenstein and they expect him to drill right through a tooth and into their brain while laughing manically.

Mice and Rats. Yep. Rats are pretty scary if they wind up in bed with you. That happened to me while staying at a very nice resort in Mexico. It was not one of my more restful nights, for sure. But still, better a rat touching my hair than a ghost.

I don’t know why, but ghosts didn’t make the list. I’ve had a few experiences in my life that could be classified as supernatural. I’ll save those stories for another time. In the meantime, I’ll wish you a spooky, spine-chilling Halloween.

Copyright © October 2024 by L.S. Fisher originally published October 2014

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ 

Some Assembly Required

We recently bought a handicap step stool with a grab bar from Amazon. The item listed “some assembly required.” I would consider that a warning label, but my husband saw it only as an inconvenience.

The day the package arrived, he wanted to put the pieces together. Being a typical man, he threw the instructions aside and began assembling the step stool. After working on it for a while, we hit a snag when we couldn’t, metaphorically speaking, get the square peg through the round hole.

A few days later, we looked at it again. I started trying to decipher the instructions, and realized that the part that was assembled was put together wrong. We took all the pieces apart and methodically followed the step-by-step instructions and successfully assembled the step stool.

“You know what this reminded me of?” I asked Harold.

“When you and Jim put the tent together?” he asked.

“Exactly!” I must have relayed that story during a similar situation.

 

“Colorado” excerpt from Indelible, unfinished memoir:

 

In retrospect, I could measure the progression of Jim’s dementia by our annual trips to Colorado. In 1995, putting up the tent was a fiasco.

“This is the way it goes together,” Jim said picking up a pole from the pile of different length rods. We tried slipping the rods into the canvas only to find our final creation was not a tent.

“Okay, now are you ready for me to dig out the instructions?” I asked with as much patience as I could muster.

“I guess so,” he said grudgingly. Between the two of us, we managed to slide out the rods.

Even with directions, it was hard to figure out what went where.

“That’s not right,” Jim insisted.

“Humor me.” I huffed and puffed in the thin mountain air as I struggled with the poles.

After a lot of stress, strain, and cuss words, our home away from home looked like a tent.

 “Let’s get the equipment out of the van,” I said.

Finally, camp was set up to our liking, and we relaxed in our lawn chairs. Jim had always been the official camp cook, and I really didn’t know how the stove worked. I watched him and offered assistance when he couldn’t quite get things right. That year, I helped with meal preparation.  Overall, the problems weren’t too bad and it didn’t discourage us.

The next year, we used the tent for the last time. We had so much trouble setting up the tent that I thought we weren’t going to get it done at all. Cooking on the camp stove was too much of a challenge for Jim, so we stocked up on picnic supplies or ate in Estes Park.

As hard as “some assembly required” is, when we follow instructions, we can save ourselves unnecessary stress. Life with a loved one who has dementia does not have step-by-step instructions. We cope by learning all we can about Alzheimer’s, but at times, we have to rely on our seat-of-the-pants skills.

In the real world, each person with dementia is a unique person and may not have the same characteristics as the textbook example. In addition, each care partner has a different level of skill, patience, and perseverance.

Building our caregiver skills can feel as if we are reading instructions in a foreign language. Sometimes we need to pause, take another look, and start all over. Each day is a new day, and a caregiver can build on personal experiences and proven best practices.

My goal was never to be the best caregiver in the world; it was to be the best caregiver I could be. Sometimes, I was discouraged. Sometimes, I was disappointed in myself. But most of all, when Jim was fed, clean, and comfortable, I was satisfied that I had done my best.

 

Copyright © October 2024 by L.S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com