Thursday, April 10, 2008

I Am A Wuss, Part II


This is only tangentially related to Noko Marie's post, and once again, I might have already written about this.

Sorry.

The point is, I am a physical coward in the most profound and simple of ways. Swimming in the ocean, I become convinced that I will drown. Trying to climb a hill, I imagine myself falling backwards. Escalators are terrifying. Anybody who tries to convince me that I am over-reacting is the enemy. Who wants me to die.

I don't know where this all came from.

See, but sometimes I forget. I think, god, it would be fun to ski down mountains or go surfing or I don't know what all.

Once upon a time I had a boyfriend with a motorcycle and I was 21 years old and I thought I was pretty goddamn cool. These days I am 30 and I have a colleague with a motorcycle and when I was offered a work-related ride on said motorcycle I was like, that would be awesome.

That's a total mis-depiction of the scenario, actually, which was really where he gave somebody else a ride on the motorcycle, and I was all like, that's so cool, I want to ride on your motorcycle, and he was like, okay, how about next week?

So next week becomes this week and all of a sudden he's explaining to me about leaning into curves and telling me what to do if I get too scared and I'm like, wait, why the hell am I doing this?

So I rode on the motorcycle and my leg shook the whole time and I thought I would die. And yet, simultaneously, it was awesome. And I got off and he was like, are you okay because your leg kept shaking?

And I didn't know how to explain that yes, I was a coward and I was scared out of my mind the whole time, really, really, really scared, but that nevertheless it was fun and I was glad I went.

By the way, I was wearing a helmet and everything.

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