Dave T’s Pros And Cons Of Stuff Everyone Has: Fears
I’m never going to find true love.
I missed out on the best opportunity of my life and it won’t come around again.
I’m going to choke on a cookie when no one’s around to give me the Heimlich.
A pedophile will kidnap my daughter at the playground.
Freddy Krueger is going to slash me up in my dreams.
These are FEARS.
Don’t know what they are?
Fears are things that we’re afraid of. For a less circular definition, fears are things that cause an emotional sense of threat, danger, anxiety, or panic.
Pros:
• Overcoming our fears makes us stronger people and gives us the confidence to attempt things we never thought we could do.
• Some people’s fears are quite funny. There was a woman on Maury once who was afraid of pickles. That’s priceless entertainment. (I didn’t actually see it. I don’t watch Maury. I was told about it. By a girl.)
• Fear can be fun, like going to see a scary movie, or riding a roller coaster, or trying to steal hair gel from Geldon The Vain Gremlin to impress a girl.
• Fear can save your life. Fear of crashing your car will stop most people from driving drunk. Fear of falling to your death will keep most people from walking near the edge of a roof or cliff. Fear of burning to death will keep most people from dousing themselves in kerosene and sticking lit sparklers in their nostrils and butthole.
• Fear causes a rush of adrenaline in times of emergency that can make us strong enough or fast enough to fight or flight flee.
• Fear can help maintain order. Fear of getting spanked or grounded often keeps little kids out of trouble. Fear of getting your hand chopped off keeps Iranian dudes from so much as jaywalking.
• Fear seems to protect smarter people in the Darwinian sense. The guy who’s smart enough to be afraid of the consequences of poking a rattlesnake with a little league bat survives long enough to pass on his smart/fearful genes.
Total Pros: 7
Cons:
• Sometimes fears lead to things like racism and violence. Fear can turn a peaceful crowd into an angry mob. It can lead a nation to elect a leader like Hitler (or to re-elect a doofus like GW). And there’s nothing funny about that. (I really wish this Con had been read by LeVar Burton and ended with the “The More You Know” logo from those NBC PSAs.)
• Fear keeps some people locked up in their homes their whole lives, trapped in a prison with no locks, unable to connect to the world or to contribute to society. In the psychiatric community, these people are known as huge pussies.
• There are documented cases of people being scared to death. Like oh-turd-there’s-a-little-ghost-girl-dripping-with-water-coming-right-out-of-my-flat-screen-crawling-like-a-crabmonster-and-then-looking-up-with-her-milky-eye-and-now-oops-I’m-dead. That really happens to people. Just maybe not exactly that way. But we don’t get to talk to the people it happens to (because they are no longer with us!), so maybe exactly that way.
• Fear Factor.
• Fears can make people miss out on some great stuff. If you’re terrified of clowns, you’ll never watch Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which is a classic.
• If that Darwin theory about fear and evolution is correct, then in a thousand generations, humanity will be super-brilliant and literally afraid of its own farts. And it will suck.
Total Cons: 6
So, 7 Pros, 6 Cons. Keep the fear flowing, please.
I was going to end by saying, "Hey, FDR, you were wrong when you said ‘There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.'" But I looked it up, and the full quote is: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Okay, that’s cool, FDR. I’m with you on that one. Sometimes you need to fight back. Well put. I so would’ve voted for you.
‘Til next time, Ciao!
Dave T
Dave Terruso is half of the sketch comedy duo Animosity Pierre.