fear factor

Fear Factor: Adrenaline Edition

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

If I stick to the classic ‘Fear Factor’ format, this post should be about fear-defying stunts. I generally try to avoid doing those, but into every life a little adrenaline must drip (or, in my case, surge like a tidal bore). So I asked myself, “What are the scariest things I’ve ever experienced?”

After ruling out politicians and 1980s boy bands I was left with a ragtag collection of memories, but I never remember being abjectly terrified. That’s probably because I’ve lived a charmed life and all the potentially dangerous situations turned out to be lucky near-misses. Still, they were seriously butt-puckering at the time.

The earliest scary situation I remember was when I was a young teenager on the farm. We were always wary of skunks, not only because of their fearsome stink but also because they often carried rabies. When they rambled through minding their own business we gave them a wide berth, but if one seemed unusually aggressive, Dad would shoot it just to be on the safe side.

I was home alone one day when a skunk marched up bold as brass. I’ll never forget staring at that skunk over the trembling gunsights, holding off until the last second to pull the trigger… and then I didn’t have to. The skunk turned and wandered away, leaving me shaking like a leaf.

As a young adult I narrowly avoided a couple of fights when I got cornered in remote places by guys much larger than me. Nothing pumps up the old adrenal glands like facing a fight you know you can’t win. Fortunately they were cowards, and when they realized I was going to fight them anyway they backed off. Whew.

Anybody who’s ever ridden a motorcycle knows there’s nothing quite like the horrifying weightlessness when gravity turns against you in a high-side. Aydan’s wild ride in Book 2 is based on the time I almost high-sided on a street bike, complete with the dragging footpeg throwing up sparks. But my guardian angel was working overtime that day (and every day, I suspect) so I pulled out of the turn unscathed and went home to change my underwear.

Then there was the time I was riding a dirt bike up a steep trail of loose shale with a cliff on one side and a hillside on the other. Getting up was a challenge, but coming down was truly scary. Especially when my brakes failed. Fortunately I was near the bottom and I hadn’t been going very fast, so I turned into the side of the hill and jolted anticlimactically to a stop.

Experiences like accidentally skiing onto a double-black-diamond downhill run or watching a tornado bear down on me were good for a few extra heartbeats, but either I’m not wired for panic or else I’m too stupid to react with appropriate fear. I got down the mountain, the tornado skipped harmlessly overhead, my guardian angel developed a drinking problem, and I puttered off happily to my next adventure.

But everything except the skiing and the tornado happened when I was young and foolish. These days I get all the adrenaline I need from crawling out the window onto our second-floor roof to wash the third-floor windows. (Okay, so now I’m old and foolish. Never mind.)

But that’s about all the fear factor I want!

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P.S. I’m on the road today, so I’ll reply to comments tomorrow – ‘talk’ to you then!

Fear Factor: Creepy-Crawly Edition

/ Diane Henders / 42 Comments

Warning: There’s a snake photo at the bottom of this post!  (Just thought I’d mention that for those who hate/fear snakes.)

No Fear Factor would be complete without a few creepy-crawlies, so here we go:

Even though I’ve had quite a few close encounters with things that crawl and slither, most of them don’t really creep me out.

(See what I did there? ‘Creep’ me out…?)

*ahem*  Sorry.

Anyway, I’ll start with spiders (and I don’t mean the lovable Spider Webb from my books).

I guess after you’ve had a large spider walking around in your mouth it’s hard to get too wound up about bugs of any sort. Mind you, I didn’t tongue the spider intentionally. I just didn’t realize the potential consequences of drinking from a hose without letting it run for a few seconds first. That poor spider probably achieved low-earth orbit when I spat him out. (The world’s first spidernaut: One small step for man; eight giant steps for arachnids…)

Over the years I’ve lifted spiders off my eyebrows, shaken them out of my hair, and, if statistics are to be believed, probably eaten close to a dozen in my sleep by now. Spiders don’t bother me.

But wood ticks?

Bleah!!! I hate wood ticks! They’re bad enough when they’re crawling around all flat and icky but once they latch on and get engorged to the size of revolting dead-white grapes… *shudders*

Before the advent of flea-and-tick collars, picking engorged ticks off the cats and dogs on the farm was a disgusting but necessary chore. It was too bad they didn’t make flea-and-tick collars for humans, too, because after being outdoors in Manitoba we almost always had to evict a couple from our clothes or bodies.

Moving on to the crawlies: I’m not crazy about centipedes, mainly because I’ve heard they bite. But wooly-bear caterpillars are cute. As kids we loved to pick them up and watch them curl into a furry ball. Then after a few seconds they’d relax and crawl around our palms while we giggled at the tickly sensation.

Cold-blooded crawlies don’t bother me, either. My fifth-grade teacher confided to my mother with some dismay, “All the other children bring me flowers. Diane brings me salamanders!”

I didn’t mean to upset her. It was just that the other kids were tormenting the poor salamanders, so I rescued them and carried them home to release by our pond after school. I kept hoping they’d stay and have families, but I never saw them again. (Maybe I should have tried bringing two salamanders home. Clearly I didn’t think that part through.)

And then there are the ‘slitheries’.  I class leeches under ‘slitheries’, and they revolt me; but then again I figure it’s probably healthy to harbour an aversion to critters that want to suck my blood.  (No vampires for me, either, thank you very much.)

Snakes, on the other hand…

Years ago, friends had a six-foot long boa constrictor who loved to cuddle up and tuck his nose under my hair where it was nice and warm.

Years ago, friends had a six-foot long boa constrictor who loved to cuddle up and tuck his nose under my hair where it was nice and warm.

Snakes are okay, but I do prefer a little advance warning. Sudden snakes are rarely a good thing, particularly if you’re poking around one of our desert micro-climates where the rattlesnakes hang out.

Snakes in quantity are another thing entirely. The garter snake pits at Narcisse, Manitoba are amazing (click on the videos at the bottom of their page if you dare). I don’t know how they all manage to untangle themselves. Apparently the accepted collective nouns for snakes are ‘bed’, ‘pit’, ‘den’, ‘knot’, and ‘nest’, but I think a ‘macramé of snakes’ would be appropriate.

Which creepy-crawly do you loathe the most?

P.S.  You may have noticed that my site was down for the better part of a day last week.  My domain host crapped out completely (yes, I’m switching to a new one now) and all my emails vanished into cyberspace.  If you emailed me any time within the past couple of weeks but didn’t get a reply, please resend your message.  I promise I’m not ignoring you!

Fear Factor: Kitchen Edition

/ Diane Henders / 54 Comments

Since October is Halloween month, I’m doing a series of Fear Factor posts.  Here’s Number 1:

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This week I embarked on a perilous mission. One that forced me to confront the darkest places in my soul. An epic crusade requiring nerves and stomach of steel.

Yes, I cleaned out the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

Ew.

I don’t know why I have such a mental block against vegetables. I eat a healthy diet most of the time. Fruit never goes bad in my house. But veggies? Um… yeah. If it’s not irresistibly delicious like fresh peas and beans or durable like carrots and beets and cabbage, it’s bad news.

I lifted out a bag of lettuce that had turned into soup without ever nearing a stockpot. Half a cucumber squished softly inside its plastic wrapper, its skin dotted with fuzzy black and white spots. A green pepper had only a small ring of black around the stem but when I cut it open it leaked foul-smelling liquid, like a giant green pustule.

Who knew that neglected green peppers turn into witch zits? Dang, if I’d only known, I could’ve kept it until Halloween and used it for decoration.

And speaking of the scariest night of the year, I could’ve offered a pretty good fear factor if I hadn’t cleaned out my bin of plastic storage containers. Seriously, that thing would scare anybody. Any time I need a container, it’s a quest worthy of Indiana Jones.

When I realize I need something from The Bin Of Doom, my heart sinks and a sense of impending disaster washes over me. I don’t even want to open the cupboard door because I know that therein lurks mortal peril. One time I opened it without sufficient preparation, and I spent the next week with a bruise on the bridge of my nose because one of the larger containers hurled itself at my face in a fit of unprovoked aggression. Plastic containers may look benign, but never trust those suckers.

So I cautiously open the cupboard door, muttering arcane incantations to protect myself: “Stay put, you bastards. I’m just going to eeeease out this one little tiny container- Aagh! Ow! Shit!”

That’s another thing about plastic containers: They ferociously protect their young.

Anyway, I finally faced the inevitable. Donned my body armour and face shield and hauled the whole bin out. The plastics mounted a daunting counterattack, but I escaped with only a few dents in my skull and equanimity. Then I sorted and reorganized the whole thing and put it back in the cupboard with my sense of accomplishment tempered by fatalism.

For now, it’s safe to open that door. But I know my enemy all too well (and the enemy is me). After a few iterations of “Oh, I don’t feel like dragging the whole bin out just to replace this one thing; I’ll just balance it on top”, I know the situation will recur. If it happens in time for Halloween, I’ll invite the little ghosties and ghoulies in and scare the crap out of them.

Or I could introduce them to the Tower of Terror: the precarious heap of bottles and cans that threatens to inundate anyone foolish enough to reach into the corner of the pantry. That’d do the trick.

What’s the scariest place in your house?