Relatively Normal Things that Make Me Noivous

Any body of water that's big enough to be in a boat. You can't breathe in the water you know. That's why, as technologically backwards as it is, I won't own a car with power windows. If you ever crash into the water from a bridge, you will be in the pitch black and you car will flip upside down and be disoriented. I don't trust I'd be able to find the hammer you're supposed to keep in your car to break the window, or even think about it. I would (hopefully) think to roll open my window.

Music. Some immediatley, some after 10 minutes, there's none that doesn't get to me after a half hour.

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Butrflynet wrote:

Ever since coming so close to being on the freeway during the 1989 Loma Preita earthquake I've had a phobia about being stuck in rush hour traffic under freeway overpasses and will speed up or slow down to avoid it or avoid the freeway during heavy rush hour traffic.

Even after reading this twice I didn't understand it: I can see how driving faster means you spend less time under an overpass, but slowing down...?

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Chai wrote:

Any body of water that's big enough to be in a boat. You can't breathe in the water you know. That's why, as technologically backwards as it is, I won't own a car with power windows. If you ever crash into the water from a bridge, you will be in the pitch black and you car will flip upside down and be disoriented. I don't trust I'd be able to find the hammer you're supposed to keep in your car to break the window, or even think about it. I would (hopefully) think to roll open my window.

.......

How sure are you of that? I always thought if your windows are closed, and whether you fall upside down or the right way up, your car floats; doesn't it mean you can just open the door, still a mechanical contraption?

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The old Volkswagen Beetle used to float real good. Most of them sink, later if not sooner. You just have to equalize internal pressure with the pressure of the water against the door, or you will not open the door. You do this by opening or breaking a window. Then you can open the door.

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High Seas wrote:

Butrflynet wrote:
Ever since coming so close to being on the freeway during the 1989 Loma Preita earthquake I've had a phobia about being stuck in rush hour traffic under freeway overpasses and will speed up or slow down to avoid it or avoid the freeway during heavy rush hour traffic.

Even after reading this twice I didn't understand it: I can see how driving faster means you spend less time under an overpass, but slowing down...?

In heavy stop and go traffic, I'll slow down and expand the space between me and the vehicle ahead of me so that when we stop, I'm not stuck sitting under the bridge waiting for the traffic to go again. More often than not, I avoid that sort of freeway traffic if I'm feeling particularly nervous about earthquakes and just drive city streets as much as possible.

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High Seas wrote:

Chai wrote:
Any body of water that's big enough to be in a boat. You can't breathe in the water you know. That's why, as technologically backwards as it is, I won't own a car with power windows. If you ever crash into the water from a bridge, you will be in the pitch black and you car will flip upside down and be disoriented. I don't trust I'd be able to find the hammer you're supposed to keep in your car to break the window, or even think about it. I would (hopefully) think to roll open my window.

.......

How sure are you of that? I always thought if your windows are closed, and whether you fall upside down or the right way up, your car floats; doesn't it mean you can just open the door, still a mechanical contraption?

Vehicles have air vents. If they are open, water comes in that way even if your windows are closed. If you have electric windows, the water shorts out the electric system and you can't open them. That's why there is a recommendation from the marketing people to carry those red hammers that help you break the window or cut the seatbelt fabric in an emergency. Those hammers provide a false sense of security for the most part, unless you've tied it to a location in the car that is easily accessible no matter what position the car is in and can remember where it is in your panic.

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high seas....cars....do not....float.....

oh sure, if you drove it off a ramp, like that woman who killed her 2 kids, it'll float for awhile, but metal does tend to be heavier than water.

Even if the car does temporary "float" the water level is obviously going to be riding up to some level on your doors.....you aren't going to be able to open a door to a car that has all that water pressure pusing against it.

I you go though a guardrail, headfirst into the drink, you're going down.

Once you're underwater, it's black, or very dark. They'll be air in your car for awhile, vents or not. Your car will flip on its back. If you don't completely panic, you'll think to get your seatbelt off, push your car seat back, and take in some deep breaths before cracking your window. You're not going to be able to just open your window and climb out. You'd have to let water into the car by cracking it and and letting the water in, so you can then climb out the window underwater, and go up.

I watched this show, where they put experienced divers in a car, and drove it headfirst into the water. The cameras on the inside of the car showed that even they became disoriented.

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Interesting responses. Have I opened a can of worms? Speaking of which, I'd have to put worms on my list.

Green Witch wrote:

The Black bear footprints in the snow.

Unknown male boot prints in the snow on my property. ( I know every tread for a mile around my place, including the UPS and Fed EX guys}

Aha! I was right. Any slob can come on your property. And sometimes noises really are from a bear.

Lots of bridge, tunnel, underpass/overpass concerns.

dagmaraka wrote:

Tunnels and subways (the underground parts) - putting blind faith in those who constructed it hundred years ago. I keep wondering when the whole city will just fall through into the subway.

dag, I have more faith in 100-year-old construction than I do in what's being built now.

Aside from farmerman's coconut/ginger ale worries, it seems like the things that make people nervous are reasonable, sane, and genuine concerns about what we encounter in our lives.

Frankly, folks, I'm a little disappointed at the sanity of this group. And this group rationality makes me just a little nervous. What secret concerns are not being revealed?

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Jaaz....I never give any thought at all to worrying about bears.

Mind you, if I lived on a continent where there were bears, then that may be different, but...who knows!

I'm a bit leery of spiders...not the usual ones that hang around the back yard and spin webs, which yesterday involved some of my laundry, but those ugly, poisonous, lethal ones - and we do have some of those.

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I've been thinking on this, Roberta. I'm a person with a batch of reasonable fears I can enumerate if called on.

I'll have to work up a list of unreasonable ones -

* all spiders except Daddy Long Legs
* bloodsuckers at lakes in Wisconsin
* platform edges or cliff edges even if they have good railings, the one exception being the bridge over a street next to the LA Bonaventure Hotel, because the bridge wasn't all that high, and the railings were fat 24" diameter tubes. Kudos to that designer. You couldn't pay me to go to that dastardly-for-many reasons cantilevered disaster poised now over the Grand Canyon, and it's probably safe for, oh, the next twenty years.
* a remaining number of ushy foods, my most unreasable being raw quail eggs on sushi, not for the sushi, but the quail egg.
* which brings up eggs. It's taken a getting to be long life to even look at people's eggs over easy.
* to be continued............. to sounds of the inner sanctum door opening

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How could I forget cockroaches.
I've only been around them once before, in my first apartment a long time ago, and I moved.
They are in the drains here. My response to seeing one is past homicidal fervor into the realm of major revulsion. Haven't seen one for a year and a half, since I started the borax/cocoa/sugar box under the kitchen sink. Knock on wood.

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Everyone should wear scuba gear while driving.

I don't think about it much anymore, but it's not too comforting knowing the new tunnel, all part of the big dig in Boston already had a piece collapse and kill someone.

And kissing girls makes me nervous. They have kudies.

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Yeh, I remember that, Slappy.

All my fear of tunnels is a layered package of reasonable and unreasonable. The dark adaptation thing is a super problem for me, and I can only drive in known-to-me well lit ones and prefer grey days for them. Driving in Italy I had to pull over and switch drivers to be safe. Past that, given I'm a passenger, I'm at least slightly uncomfy in them.

I posted some thread or maybe Walter did, on a new tunnel and transit station in the Alps. Just to look at the diagrams was a bit of a heartbeater.

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To ratchet up your tunnel and transport fear vicariously....

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=89468

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And in my Holland tunnel comment on that thread, I wasn't driving the last time I went through it and was seeing it after decades away from New York, so sentiment superceded fear.

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Joeblow wrote:

Sometimes I feel anxious when the phone rings.

Count me in on that one Joeblow. I think it started for me about 12-13 years ago when my son was going through a nasty divorce. Then in the last few years I was dealing with my mother, who was in a decline before she died. Each phone call could very well have been a problem that I had to solve.

Not only do I get nervous when the phone rings, I go bananas when I come into my house, and there is a message on my answering machine.

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osso wrote:

Yeh, I remember that, Slappy.

yup, kudies aren't something you can just forget.

what makes me noivous?
rattlesnakes, revivals, and republicans...

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Slappy Doo Hoo wrote:

Everyone should wear scuba gear while driving.

Love this, Slappy!

ossobuco wrote:

How could I forget cockroaches.
I've only been around them once before, in my first apartment a long time ago, and I moved.
They are in the drains here. My response to seeing one is past homicidal fervor into the realm of major revulsion. Haven't seen one for a year and a half, since I started the borax/cocoa/sugar box under the kitchen sink. Knock on wood.

I appreciate your opening the inner sanctum doors, osso. I have an insane, irrational fear of mice. A phobia, not a nervousia. However, thinking one might show up (and me without a cat) makes me noivous.

I grew up in and live in New York, a city of tunnels and bridges. Never thought one way or the other about the subway or crossing a bridge. But I confess to looking for dripping water when I cruise through the Holland or Lincoln Tunnel.

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Region Philbis wrote:

osso wrote:
Yeh, I remember that, Slappy.
yup, kudies aren't something you can just forget.

what makes me noivous?
rattlesnakes, revivals, and republicans...

Yeh, kooties, that's what I call 'em.

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Phoenix, Anxiety about incoming phone communication. Hard to live with. I confess to getting a bit edgy right before I open the mailbox. What horror awaits me?

reg, So you worry about the three Rs. Considering your location, I think you can probably relax about the rattlesnakes. The other two, good luck.

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Relatively Normal Things that Make Me Noivous

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