Four days.
I think this is the longest I've been away since this affair began...
I picked up two of my classmates on my way to college on Tuesday. (Incidentally, they were two of the cool men who'd been witness to my embarrassing escapade of two weeks ago, which meant that I was a little more aware of my driving than usual.) When we finally reached class, I made the mistake of asking one of them to comment on my driving. What he said was, "You need to get rid of the fear that you're gonna hit someone or that someone is gonna hit you." He also said "You need to stop driving as though you can't stand the way everyone else is driving. You can't change people, you know."
!!!
Now, in the past, this friend has hit too many nails on the head for me to dismiss his opinion out of hand, much as I would like to. However, in all sincerity, I honestly believed I was a cool road person. Then I remembered my recent need to write a post on my morbid daytime fantasies (can anyone say oxymoron?), and decided to do a self analysis and get rid of a nagging post idea in one fell swoop.
For as long as I can remember (... or wait; i think the oldest distinct memory of this was in the seventh grade, when i was climbing up a ladder to the roof of our house to watch the diwali light show...) I have had an extremely overactive imagination. And this imagination doesn't bring me sparkling castles in the air peopled with charming guests and loving friends. No. This is the kind of imagination that is called fertile because, well, just about anything can grow there. This is the imagination that had me involved in earthquakes at school, invasions by aliens, assaults on the occult (i was reading a lot of king) and, my personal favourite, a long convoluted tale of my transformation into an avenging angel after the brutal murder of my parents (the less said, the better).
Now, it was during the aforementioned climb to the roof that I had my first daytime gore-vision. There I was, going up the ladder in the nearly-pitch darkness, when I suddenly had a very distinct image of myself, first dropping my glasses (i had a power of -7 in those days) so they crashed noisily to the ground, then losing my grip on the ladder, and then ignominiously tumbling down to crack my head open on the marble flooring.
Since then, any time I have found myself in any dangerous or even potentially dangerous situation, my mind seems to take the easy way out in dealing with the fear, by first creating a vivid and realistic (believe me, realistic. i have, till date, flown off flyovers, been the victim of numerous gory vehicular accidents, been impaled, squashed, beaten up, and kidnapped, had savage animals attack me - and all with attendant special effects, both visual and aural) worst case scenario, playing it out in stereophonic glory, and then letting go of the blind terror.
As a matter of fact, I realize that this is the way I deal with almost everything that scares me: imagine the worst. That way, you win both ways.
I think this is the longest I've been away since this affair began...
I picked up two of my classmates on my way to college on Tuesday. (Incidentally, they were two of the cool men who'd been witness to my embarrassing escapade of two weeks ago, which meant that I was a little more aware of my driving than usual.) When we finally reached class, I made the mistake of asking one of them to comment on my driving. What he said was, "You need to get rid of the fear that you're gonna hit someone or that someone is gonna hit you." He also said "You need to stop driving as though you can't stand the way everyone else is driving. You can't change people, you know."
!!!
Now, in the past, this friend has hit too many nails on the head for me to dismiss his opinion out of hand, much as I would like to. However, in all sincerity, I honestly believed I was a cool road person. Then I remembered my recent need to write a post on my morbid daytime fantasies (can anyone say oxymoron?), and decided to do a self analysis and get rid of a nagging post idea in one fell swoop.
For as long as I can remember (... or wait; i think the oldest distinct memory of this was in the seventh grade, when i was climbing up a ladder to the roof of our house to watch the diwali light show...) I have had an extremely overactive imagination. And this imagination doesn't bring me sparkling castles in the air peopled with charming guests and loving friends. No. This is the kind of imagination that is called fertile because, well, just about anything can grow there. This is the imagination that had me involved in earthquakes at school, invasions by aliens, assaults on the occult (i was reading a lot of king) and, my personal favourite, a long convoluted tale of my transformation into an avenging angel after the brutal murder of my parents (the less said, the better).
Now, it was during the aforementioned climb to the roof that I had my first daytime gore-vision. There I was, going up the ladder in the nearly-pitch darkness, when I suddenly had a very distinct image of myself, first dropping my glasses (i had a power of -7 in those days) so they crashed noisily to the ground, then losing my grip on the ladder, and then ignominiously tumbling down to crack my head open on the marble flooring.
Since then, any time I have found myself in any dangerous or even potentially dangerous situation, my mind seems to take the easy way out in dealing with the fear, by first creating a vivid and realistic (believe me, realistic. i have, till date, flown off flyovers, been the victim of numerous gory vehicular accidents, been impaled, squashed, beaten up, and kidnapped, had savage animals attack me - and all with attendant special effects, both visual and aural) worst case scenario, playing it out in stereophonic glory, and then letting go of the blind terror.
As a matter of fact, I realize that this is the way I deal with almost everything that scares me: imagine the worst. That way, you win both ways.
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