Angie Kinghorn

Socks, sharks, and other irrational fears

So the hubster has informed me, that despite my status as a relatively rational and intelligent person, I harbor a lot of irrational fears.  (Really?  Doesn’t everybody worry that the one time they use their laptop in a thunderstorm that the house will be hit by lightning and they’ll be electrocuted via email?)
For instance, I have a pair of socks that causes me considerable anxiety.  I honestly have no idea how they came to live in my sock drawer, but while all my favorite socks go missing on a regular basis, this pair is an irritatingly reliable presence that refuses to be eaten by the sock monster that lives in our dryer.  This is an admirable and rare quality in a pair of socks, so I’ve kept them despite the irrational fear they instill deep in my soul each time I wear them.
What’s the big deal, you ask?  They’re just plain white athletic socks.  
Except for the giant letter “R” stitched onto the outside of one, and the giant “L” stitched onto the other.  (And no, they’re not supposed to be Ralph Lauren.)
My fear is that I will meet with some disaster whilst wearing these socks, and that their presence on my feet will cause the paramedics to draw some erroneous conclusions.  For instance, they might be unable to find my ID and conclude from my dress that I’m the kind of girl who monograms her socks, so I must be Lorna Ripley.  Alternately, they might decide the letters on the socks were a grown woman’s hideous attempt to hide her inability to tell left from right, and then come to the (logical) conclusion that I turned right when I meant to go left and caused a huge pileup and thus was at fault for the whole mess.  My greatest fear, however, is that they’ll assess the sock situation and dock me about 100 IQ points, and my medical care will proceed accordingly, in a manner that might involve wrist restraints and a locked ward.  
Sharks cause me considerable anxiety and fear, whether I’m at the beach or several hundred miles away in my bed.  I absolutely cannot let one arm, leg, or even a toe dangle out over the mattress.  Even if our bedroom is 1000 degrees, I can’t do it.  Because in my screwed-up mind, that mattress becomes a tiny piece of wood adrift in shark-infested waters, and any appendage peeking out over it is a shark appetizer, served up on a platter.  (Sure, you didn’t think about it before, but wait until tonight.)  
And if I’m actually at the beach, Lord help me.  I’m fine in the clear waters of the Caribbean.  I’ve even been known to scuba dive there.  But in the murky saltwater of the East Coast, I get nervous the minute I can’t see my toes through the water, which is pretty much the minute they’re covered by water.  Something about not being able to see through the water gets me every time.  And I always worry that I’ll have a scrape on my knee or a cut on my foot or, ohmigod, my period, and that sharks will come from miles around, attracted by one tiny droplet of blood.  
Ridiculous, I know.  But “Jaws”has lasting repercussions. 
If all that weren’t weird enough, I really worry that some day, God will hear me say that I want something to happen and make it happen.  And then I’d wind up living in Gisele’s body and ruining her career while she tried to squeeze my body into my skinny jeans and dropped my kids on their heads.  Perhaps I watched too many Tom Hanks movies as a child.  
This one may not be particularly irrational, but I constantly worry about where my emails actually go when I send them out into the cyber void.  I’ve also been known to lose sleep wondering about emails that people may have sent to me that are lost in that same void.  This one really screws with my head, y’all.    
Usually after I’ve been reading a mystery novel or watching some spy movie, I start to fear that my house or my car is bugged and that someone somewhere is laughing at my rendition of “Alejandro,” or reporting me to the NSA for discussing editorials about radical Islam with my husband.  
Oh, here’s a biggie: fear that I will be stopped by a policeman on suspicion of drunk driving.  Let me clarify: I don’t drive drunk.  Ever.  But I’ve been known to swerve and do irrational looking things behind the wheel of a car while sober.  I mean, it’s really difficult to pick up somebody’s lost Croc from the backseat or refill a snack trap without swerving across a lane or two of traffic.  Know what I mean?  Anyway, I’m worried that someday I’ll get stopped and then fail the sobriety test, as I’ve also been known to fall over whilst stone cold sober.  And even in the depths of sobriety, under that kind of pressure, I am not entirely sure that I could count backward from 100 by 7s or whatever it is they make you do. 
I am terrified of being caught shoplifting.  Again, let me clarify: I have never ever shoplifted as much as a lipstick from a drugstore.  If the grocery clerk doesn’t see the milk under my cart I stop her and have her scan it in.  I’ve been known to send back a bill in a restaurant if they’ve forgotten to include something on it.  But all the surveillance cameras in stores these days make me afraid that someone will think I’m trying to shoplift when I’m really just rummaging in my purse trying to answer my phone.  This was particularly bad when the kids were small enough to be in a stroller.  If I only needed a few things from the grocery store, I’d just toss them in the basket under the stroller.  But I did this while behaving like a dealer in Vegas.  I’d show my empty hands to the eyes in the sky, purposefully grab a pack of diapers, make a loud comment to the babies about how we didn’t need a cart that day because we were only getting a couple of things, and then shove the item into the stroller basket.  I got the hairy eye from a store manager once, as he saw me shoving salad dressing into the mesh pocket on the back of our double jogger, and that was enough.  From then on, I pushed a stroller and pulled a cart.   
Sometimes when we’re sitting at home on a Saturday night, enjoying dinner and a movie, I’m struck with a feeling of certainty that everyone else on the entire planet is at Oprah’s for some fabulous dinner party to which we were not invited.  
Finally, I worry that this post is too long.  Perhaps I should break it up into pieces.  Irrational Fears, Volume 1.  Irrational Fears, Volume 2.  And so on.  Mentioned it to hubster, who said, “That says something, doesn’t it?”  
Well, hell.  Does it?  

Have fun storming the castle!

Writer’s workshop prompt: What was it about that movie?  Describe a movie you once had memorized.

To this day, I don’t know what it is about The Princess Bride, but a small kernel of my brain has devoted itself to maintaining the movie on constant re-run status.  So much so that the hubster suggested (only half kidding) that I donate my brain to science so they can find and study this particularly annoying cluster of cells after I’m dead and gone.  
It all comes down to the fact that this movie is just so damn quotable.  Anytime I snarkily say “As you wish,” all I can think off is Buttercup hurling herself down the steep hill after Westley when she’s just realized that it really is Westley and not the Dread Pirate Roberts.  Likewise, when I’m feeling particularly melodramatic, I tend to drop into Buttercup’s, “You mock my pain!”  (I try not to remember The Man in Black’s reply: “Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.”)  
Every time I think of a wedding, in the back of my head, I can hear my friend Christine from law school, reciting the clergyman’s speech at the beginning of Buttercup’s truncated wedding to Prince Humperdinck.  We spent most of our 3L year planning our weddings, and she had this thing down pat.  “Mawage.   Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday.  Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam …”
Seriously, people, this is not the stuff of Citizen Kane, but it is catchy.  Who among us didn’t spend a sizable portion of middle and high school Spanish classes muttering in bad accents, “My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”
Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?  Oh, wait, different favorite movie.
Again, TPB is never going to win an Academy Award, or even a Razzie, but how can you not love it for lines like Vizzini’s, “You fool!  You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – the most famous of which is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia’ – but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line!’”
And lastly, a classic from Prince Humperdinck: “Would you at least consider me as an alternative to suicide?”  

Here there be dragons

Our yard harbors many things.  Two small tornadoes (um, I mean, children), one spastic yet elderly bichon frise, more ants than I care to count, barred owls, the occasional hawk, a great blue heron, and now … dragons. 
I had no idea we had a dragon until Friday afternoon, when the twins came racing in from the back yard, shrieking, “Mommy, there’s a dragon!”
My immediate response: “Well, what are you doing in here?  Get out there and slay it!”  (You would have said the same thing, right?)
So, with no planning and much intensity, the twins commenced Operation Slay the Dragon.  What they lacked in organization, they made up in imagination.  First, they marched around the yard looking very purposeful.  Then they both picked up sticks, chased the dog for a moment, and then began sword fighting with the sticks, pausing occasionally to yell, “Arrr!”  This prompted my Inner Mommy to start screaming that someone was going to lose an eye.  
(Let me add here that my Inner Mommy is waaaay too uptight, so I shut her up by tweeting about the incident.  I mean really.  What are the actual odds of someone losing an eye?)
The twins tend to lose interest in their imaginary games quickly (see transition from Operation Slay the Dragon to Operation Pirate, supra), so I assumed the dragon would be gone after their afternoon nap.
Instead, the children awoke and ventured into the yard, only to return, screaming, to announce that we now had five dragons.  I sent them back out to slay the beasts, figuring that five dragons should buy me at least half an hour to write or read in peace. 
Silly Mommy.
It took less than a minute for my son came running back into the house, and I made a feeble attempt to shoo him back outside to slay the rapidly multiplying dragons.  “But Mommy!” he screeched.  “These dragons are friendly!  Can we keep them?” 
“I don’t know,” I said, warily.  “How big are they?” 
By this time, his sister was at the door as well.  “Mommy, they’re so cute!” she squealed.  “And they’re red.  And there’s a mommy dragon, and a daddy dragon, and baby dragons!”
And that, dear readers, is how we found ourselves out at our favorite Friday night pizza joint with our two children and three imaginary (red) dragons.  As if we weren’t weird enough.
Neither of my children could be called shy, but my son is particularly outgoing (read: physically incapable of keeping his mouth shut for more than ten seconds).  When our waitress got to the table, the first thing he did was order water.
For his dragon.
I don’t know what triggered it, but in the past month, it’s as if God flipped the switch on my kids’ imaginations from “nonexistent” to “on.”  It’s wonderful to watch them pretending to bake cupcakes out of plastic cups, playing policemen or pirates in the back yard, or carrying around pretend baby animals.  Well, except for the week they carried around imaginary baby crabs, and my son loudly announced to everyone he saw at church, “I got crabs!”
The whole thing reminds me of ancient maps.  When the map reached places uncharted, it was assumed those places were dangerous, and the maps were often marked with the phrase, “Here there be dragons.”  
We are in uncharted waters.  So far things are fun, but I have no idea what’s going to pop up next.  My first thought is that quote from Jaws, “I think we’re going to need a bigger boat.”
My second thought is, “I wonder where I can get one of those ‘Here there be dragons’ signs for the front door?”
Until then, I think I’ll go to bed only after saying the old English prayer my parents always had hanging on their bedroom wall:
“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggitie beasties, Good Lord deliver us.”

This cannot end well

So, tonight the hubster was preparing the twins’ dinner, and decided they would be dining on meatballs.  
“Yay!  Meatbulbs!” our son shrieked.
“Yes, these,” he said, shaking the frozen lumps of meat into a casserole dish, “are called meatbulbs.”
“Wow,” the twins said in unison.  (Not kidding.  Unison.  The effect is very horror-movie-ish.)
“Yep, they’re meatbulbs.  You know, if you go out in the yard and plant these in the dirt, it’ll grow into a meatball tree!”
“I wanna be a meatball tree!” 
“Me, too!  I a meatball!”
“Maybe someday, when I bigger, I can be a meatball tree.  They’re so pretty…”
So I’m saying this here in a public forum.  When, in about three days, our yard stinks to high heaven and the soil has been gouged into jagged ruts by various rodentia, keep in mind–he started it.  It was the hubster that planted the seed for this sure-to-follow misadventure.
I had nothing to do with it.
And roughly five minutes later….the hubster takes the empty paper towel roll (known in preschool circles as a telescope, fyi) and demonstrates its use as megaphone.  Have I mentioned that our kids are already on the *extraordinarily loud* end of the spectrum?  
Conclusion: the hubster’s ego was inflated overmuch by yesterday’s post.  Situation will be rectified posthaste.