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The Scariest Thing You Have Ever Done
This was the topic recently on the Moe and Sally Morning Show for our local Palm Beach radio station. It is the best morning drive radio show I have ever listened to, and I have listened to many over the years. I didn’t call in, but still gave the topic considerable thought. Mrs. Pessimist would almost certainly respond skydiving because she did that for the first time three years ago. I wisely chose to observe her from the ground, although I didn’t see anything like what she saw.
I finally decided that the time I agreed to cook all of the food for the Women’s Retreat at our church had to be the scariest thing I have ever done. Sixty-eight women with sixty-eight special dietary preferences for two days. It was on Valentine’s Day weekend, of course. The Saturday night meal was an elegant affair. I chose a strawberry and spinach salad, braised beef short ribs with onion gravy, scalloped potatoes and fresh bacon-assisted green beans. Since I do not bake, I served store-bought vanilla flan with fresh berries for dessert. Have I ever mentioned that I am a radiologist, not a chef?
I heard a few complaints, but none that I took seriously. Would you cook for sixty-eight women, or would you rather jump out of an airplane?
Published in General
I have jumped out of an airplane.
I like cooking, and am fairly creative, (at least i like to think so) so would have no issue cooking for 68 women…
What scares me…
Demons.
Ghosts.
At least they used to.
Growing up, I frequently sensed and “saw” very scary shadowy, menacing sprouts in my bedroom.
In our basement, when I needed to go get laundry or a jar of canned tomatoes out of the pantry, I would plan my attack, get what I needed and RUN as fast as I could, back up stairs, turning off lights as I went.
Decades later, my sister, acknowledged parallel stories. She routinely saw spirits in the same bedroom (we swapped rooms), but saw them as a friendly Mother and child, not menacing, and had similar terrifying feelings when going to the basement.
Her theory, and she claimed some historical basis, was that our house was built on a local Indian site.
I am a bit claustrophobic, but did some spelunking, am afraid of heights, but went rock climbing, afraid of drowning (i definitely am a doggie paddling level swimmer) but passed (barely) every Adult Boy Scout Summer camp swimming test, so i could hang with the boys, and went scuba diving.
Have to think about it.
Thanks for sharing that. Seriously. Since I have grown too old to be afraid of anything other than the ultimate fear we all face, I have forgotten the unlimited fears of childhood which never really leave us alone. These days trying to carry a large box up a flight of stairs when I can’t see my feet or the stairs produces total panic. I do try to persevere, however. Just don’t ask me to step from a ladder to a roof. That is not happening.
To quote that old song by Delbert McClinton, “I’ve seen the bullets in the chamber from the wrong end of a gun . . . ” I’d put that pretty high on the list along with going down a ski slope when I was in over my head.
I don’t remember that particular song but Delbert McClinton radio station will always be on my pandora playlist.
I’d jump out of an airplane before facing the judgment of 68 women. Well done.
As for my own scariest act: rappelling. It wasn’t the actual descent that was scary, it was leaning out over the cliff edge for the first time.
Yep. That for me is exactly like stepping off of a ladder. I know where the roof is and I know the ladder isn’t going to suddenly fall away but there is no way in hell I am going to make that step.
I did learn to rappel in my earlier life when I lived in that other body.
Django, if there is a God in heaven, someday Delbert, Bonnie Raitt, Lightenin Hopkins and Big Mama Thornton are going to have one great party.
Hmmm… is it actually possible to see the bullets in the CHAMBER, of ANY gun? In the cylinder of a revolver, yes.
Never mind.
I agree. There is a great video of Delbert singing with Jimmy Hall. Been This Way Too Long to Change. Apparently, unrehearsed. Delbert is reading the lyrics off a laptop computer screen.
I think the scariest thing I ever did was jumping off a bicycle going 30mph over the handlebars. I didn’t think I had any choice. There was a left-turning VW Beetle about to broadside my bicycle. (I’d never seen a 12-foot tall VW Beetle before, but I swear that is how big it looked just before I unloaded from my bicycle.)
I was tail end Charlie in a group of cyclists going on a long downhill on Huron Street, heading home. I was 15. The lady driving the car was an elderly law professor at the University of Michigan. Didn’t see me.
I jumped off the bike on the curbside lane. I apparently translated all my linear velocity into rotational velocity as I did a complete summersault roll when I landed and ended on my feet on the curb lane on the other side of the road (it was five lanes as I recall). I was completely uninjured. Didn’t even have any road rash, although the windbreaker I was wearing got ripped up. Mind we didn’t have any bicycle helmets back then.
Bike was totaled. Looked like modern art. As I recalled, I walked home.
When we were kids (12-15 or so), we’d spend a day climbing a “mountain” near our homes that had a big exposed cliff on top with a small cave. The trek involved crossing a railroad trestle over a river to get to the path up the hill.
Walking over that trestle was dicey because we couldn’t see very far down the tracks and we had to listen carefully for any trains. About halfway over was the stomach-churning part; go back or hurry forward?
Here’s a recent picture of the “mountain.” It seemed big back then.
I would have to say the initial deep dive in our newly-constructed submarine during alfa trials. Helluva way to test hull integrity . . .
Update: It was scary looking back at it, but not while doing it. Still, it’s probably the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done, although I’m still waiting for neutral observer to ask me if an outfit makes her look fat . . .
In the early years of our marriage, my husband and I bought a big old farmhouse in a town in northern Massachusetts. Our families were excited to have Thanksgiving in this beautiful place complete with a small apple orchard and a big old leaning-to-the-right, three-story antique barn. We got a turkey grown in town, and it was a thirty-pound bird. It was huge, and it took up my entire oven. I had no idea how to cook it.
I called my Italian mother-in-law because she knew everything about cooking. I explained my dilemma. She said, “Well, that’s a big bird. I’d put in the oven tonight at about 275 degrees. Let it slow roast overnight.” With complete trust and confidence in her because she was the best cook in the world, we did just that.
At six the next morning, the phone rang. “Is the bird all right in the oven? I’ve been up all night worrying about the advice I gave you.” :) :)
I’d rather jump out of an airplane. Scariest thing I’ve ever done? I don’t know; I try not to remember times of high stress.
The kids were little and had absolutely no fear of heights: But I did. We visited the Grand Canyon and all I remember is how disturbed it made me feel when the littlest boy stepped right up to the edge on a sheer cliff. It was a looong ways down.
Thought about it. Still thinking about it. Probably colored by something that happened when I was in Jr. Hi: I saw a gyrene bounce while my dad tried (and failed) to save another that went in the drink. (Camp Lejeune MCAF about 1958)
Forget jumping from a perfectly good airplane!
And I hate hate hate to cook.
So you put me between a rock and a hard place.
And yet the book “Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon” claims that no child has ever fallen into the Grand Canyon. Only foolish adults, most of them fueled by alcohol.
Probably saved by their parents.
Oh, I’d rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane than cook for that many people. My late husband and I skydived for a whole summer, advancing through static line training into freefall. It was absolutely awesome.
I like to cook, but cooking for that many people is just work. I see it as labor-intensive, harried work, not scary.
I think my being seven months pregnant, and then eight months pregnant ranks right up there.
A close friend and her boyfriend took me bowling at the seven month mark. We met for lunch a few days later, and she remarked that I seemed oddly subdued about the coming big event.
“Why wouldn’t I be that way. In fact I’m not subdued — I’m terrified.”
“But you were fine about things a week ago.”
“Did you not pay any attention to how big bowling balls are? Did you not realize a baby’s head is not much smaller? I sure noticed both those things.”
I was up on the fourth floor scavenging tools on a construction site. I had gone up one of those rickety ad hoc ladders cobbled together from scraps that are de rigueur in these places because the stair well was still all well and no stairs. Heading back down I put a foot on the top step. That was still on a ladder that some @$#% had moved to someplace else that they preferred. I am the kind of voracious reader that considers all sorts of practical application of my reader. In the eternity between the miss and the concrete I half turned, positioned my legs beneath me, knees slightly bent, and rolled forward when I finally hit the ground, ending on my back. And my forearms stuck with a half dozen or so rusty 16 penny nails. A little spit and mud and the bleeding stopped. Reading is fundamental.
I was seven when my father put me on his shoulders and walked right up to the edge. Looking over, I wondered just how psychologically sound my father really was. I didn’t say a word, just waited for it to end. It was an excellent view, though.
My son leaned way over the Grand Canyon to get a nice photograph of a squirrel munching on some seeds with an impressive background. That may have been one of the more dangerous things he ever did. Getting married, having kids etc. were probably scarier.
The only reason to do that is if you’re trying to prove Clark Kent is Superman.
I think you hit the street cred x50 bonus on the way down. Wow.
It was a classic case where a sudden event slowed the world to a crawl. Maybe it was stairwell cred.
I was born scared of everything….but I did everything anyway. My father told me “Where there’s no fear there’s no sense.” So that was kind of validating.
The scariest thing that I ever had to deal with was an Amish birth where the mother abrupted her placenta and hemorrhaged and the baby, born with the placenta attached, had to be resuscitated. Challenging enough in a hospital setting, even more so in the primitive environment of an Old Order Amish home. We did what we had trained to do and all was well. I don’t think the parents realized anything was amiss. The strongest memory that night though was of the two Amish grandmothers like two black crows silhouetted by the light from the fireplace, passing the bright eyed baby back and forth as they cleaned and dressed him up like a little Amish doll, bonnet and all.