What I'm Afraid Of (Or Used to be, Anyway)

Crawling up the walls and creeping around the forest floor

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: serpents, automobiles, and wearing almost nothing on purpose.

Ingredient List

🎵 : More than I’d like to admit, I revisit this live version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs,” solely because of Stevie Nicks’ devastating staredown of Lindsey Buckingham.

And yes, I’m listening to the new Taylor Swift double album. First thoughts: enjoyable, but she needs to move on from Jack Antonoff.

Not too much reading this week, it’s been a whirlwind of travel from the Boston Marathon to Venice, Italy, with Believe in the Run. I’m lucky enough to be finishing this up in my hotel room as I look out the window at the Adriatic Sea.

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Milky White

For most of my life, I was afraid of snakes. I don’t think I need to dive into that sentiment any further, as that is the case with about 95% of the human population. The other 5% were either homeschooled or attended an experimental elementary school. 

Now, I wasn’t deathly afraid of them, unlike my mother and mother-in-law. But I couldn’t imagine picking one up. Then, about nine years ago, I just got into herping. Not the kind of herping done in the back alleys around Bourbon Street or Baltimore, rather, the kind done in the backwater of bayous. Herpetology, if we’re being fully accurate– the study of amphibians and reptiles.

I joined a few herping Facebook groups, got into some YouTube videos, went down internet wormholes, and soon I was out flipping logs and listening for the rustle of leaves beside walking paths. All of this was way before the Instagram and TikTok algorithms started sending herping content into the whole world. Way before @fishingarrett (aka the yoink guy) gained over 5 million followers in his search for a 20-foot Burmese python in the Florida Everglades. 

Eventually, I thought: this is actually an irrational fear. I suspect most of you will disagree, but in reality, most snakes are nonvenomous, and while some may bite, mostly what they’ll do is just make your hands smell really bad. I’m not sure if I was bored or just needed something interesting in my life to happen at the time, but either way, I had one goal in mind after diving into thte world of herping: I need to conquer this fear and pick up a snake in the wild.

The first snake I picked up was a black rat snake while biking the C&O Canal trail with my friend Zach. It was lying in the middle of the path and I nearly ran over it. I was terrified to pick it up, but I did. It didn’t bite me, it kind of just wound itself up around its own body and up to my arm.

These days, I just grab them without thinking and show them to my kids or whoever is with me at the moment, much to their chagrin. I can also identify most snakes at first glance, which is kind of cool.

My favorite thing, though, is that my kids love going on hikes with me, flipping logs, looking for snakes and salamanders. That years later, they still get excited about the small ringneck snakes we found in the spring, or the milky white eyes of a black racer about to shed its skin. 

And for that I am grateful.

Gorgeous garter on Orcas Island

Course 2

Appetizer: Junior Bacon Cheeseburger

It’s weird to say I’ve had body image issues, but I definitely had exercise image issues. Is that a thing? I guess that’s a thing. As many of you know, I didn’t start running until my early/mid-thirties. Prior to that I didn’t do much of anything, but every once in awhile I’d think about running. The thought crossed my mind as something I should do, because other people have done it. For me, the barrier to entry wasn’t the fact that I was a huge fan of cigarettes, or that my only running shoe was a pair of Nike Shox I bought at Goodwill, or that it was too hot or too cold out. The main reason was because I was self-conscious about how I looked when I ran.

It’s impossible for me to describe why this was a thing. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe someone made fun of me in middle school or high school, but I don’t remember it ever happening. I had no problems whatsoever playing baseball, golf, tennis, or skateboarding. No issues playing on stage in front of a few hundred people, no issues with public speaking. But public running– the thought of it made my skin crawl. I imagined passing houses, sets of eyes staring through the slats of blinds, just thinking to themselves: “Look at this guy, running. What a weirdo.” 

Let me tell you, from the outside, I was in way better physical shape than I am now. I was in my mid-twenties and my metabolic rate was through the roof. I actually, factually drank more beer than water, routinely indulged in Wendy’s junior bacon cheeseburgers, and it did nothing except make me look more like a runner. But putting on shorts and a shirt and lifting both feet off the ground in a forward motion–terrifying.

In the same way I can’t remember how I became self-conscious about my running gait, I also can’t quite remember how I got over it. I know the first step was going to Planet Fitness, which was crazy stressful when I first went. It’s laughable to even type that out, but wait– it gets even worse.

As part of my New Year’s resolution at the time, my wife and I got a membership to the Planet Fitness in Dundalk, Maryland. For the unfamiliar, Dundalk is basically a trailer park disguised as an entire town in Baltimore County. The place gets a bad rap, but I ain’t judging their content or their character– after all, I sent my kids to daycare out there. One time, a fistfight broke out with an Amazon worker because the delivery person was knocking on the door during nap time. The worker got mad, the delivery driver dropped the racial slur and a fist fight ensued (rightfully so, I should add). That is Dundalk in a nutshell.

So let me repeat: I was nervous to use an elliptical machine in the Dundalk Planet Fitness, a place which probably still allowed smoking and a place that definitely had pizza Mondays.

However, after hanging out for a few sessions in the Judgement Free Zone, I realized that wow– really, truly, nobody cared. I still had yet to run outside, but I exercised in public and wasn’t shamed for it. 

Of course, that resolution ended up in flames and I eventually canceled that membership. But a couple years later I decided to take up running, for real. I started out with 7-inch shorts at first, and as any runner knows, they just get shorter from there. Now I’ll run in pretty much anything or not anything (okay, I still don’t take my shirt off), and I’m sure I look “interesting” to normal people and normal to my running friends. Nobody should be wearing 3-inch shorts, but we do it because we can.

Meanwhile, there are people looking out the slats of the blinds saying, “Look at this guy, running. What a weirdo.”

And I’m okay with that.

Proof they just get shorter

Course 3

The Main: Mr. Yuk

Like many parents, most of my fears revolve around the prospect of bad things befalling my children, the random occurrence of a series of unfortunate events. 

However, I think I filter my fears differently than most people. 

For instance, I live in Baltimore, one of the most violent cities in America, but have practically zero fear of kidnapping, stranger danger, child trafficking, school shootings, bullying, falling, consuming cleaners from under the kitchen sink, or much of what you see on the news that has led to the mass psychosis of safetyism in our country. I’m not particularly fearful about climate change, holes in the ozone layer, or acid rain– turning my jeans into acid wash is rad.

Wars will always be here, people will profit from them, young men will die so old men can prove nothing. Sickness and death will come as it does.

In day to day life, I try to look at actual statistics, and not the feelings based fears that dominate 24/7 news headlines. In doing so, it’s still true that we’re living in one of the safest times in world history. Far safer than any time in the “good old days” that we often hear about. I’m able to ignore most macro level fears, at least on a global scale, but I have plenty of micro level ones.

Here is what I fear the most:

Lack of independence for my kids

Truthfully, I was not very independent as a child or young adult. I often asked my mom to do things for me, and she would, because she is the most selfless person I know. In high school, I once had to work a shift bussing tables and a friend had an extra ticket to an Orioles game. I desperately wanted to go, but was terrified to call the manager and request off. I made my mom do it and I still wish I hadn’t.

I didn’t learn independence until my late twenties, when I had a job installing water meters in people’s houses, by myself, with no assistance nearby. It’s actually something that truly changed my life, and I want to write about it more another time. But in that job, I had no choice but to figure it out when things went wrong in the field. Which I did, and from then on, I was free.

As a parent, I try and challenge my kids to be assertive. If they want something, go get it. If they have a question, go ask it. Ride fast on a bike, go hard down a hill on a skateboard, climb a tall tree. Go explore the neighborhood with friends, without me. 

Someday they’re going to have to go out on their own, and for them to be the best versions of themselves, they need to know they can do it themselves.

Cars

Living in a city, we try and walk and bike as often as possible. To school every day, to baseball practice via the water taxi, to the library or playground or grocery store. Collectively, the best part of my day is the 25-minute walk with my kids to school drop-off in the morning. 

That said, Baltimore is an unbelievably car-centric city, falling behind almost every major city in bike and pedestrian infrastructure. It’s also a place where most petty crimes, including virtually all traffic violations, go unpunished. Which is why I’m most scared of cars, both for my kids and myself. 

Cars accidents are the number one cause of accidental death in America. Cell phone use and distracted driving go together like eggs and bacon. Trucks and SUVs continue to get bigger and bigger. Pedestrian deaths have reached a 41-year high, killing over 7,500 people in America according to the most recent data available.

Which is why, when people worry about us living in Baltimore, I try and tell them–statistically, there’s a far greater chance that you or your kid will be seriously maimed or killed in a car accident somewhere over the course of the 30,000 miles you drive your cars each year. The chance is so great that if the number of car deaths were applied to any other life sector, it would be deemed a national crisis, an emergency of epidemic proportions. It’s not, of course, because we’re all complicit in it, myself included.

So I try to keep them out of cars, but I’m still scared of them, because I don’t trust their drivers, ever. Texting their way through intersections, rolling through stop signs and crosswalks, swerving through school zones to get to their destination 42 seconds faster.

And yet, going back to my first fear, I need my kids to be independent– to cross the street by themselves or walk to the library or play outside without me watching over them every second. But damn if it doesn’t scare me a little bit every time.

Addiction

This one comes in two forms for me: drugs and screens. I’m not going to turn this into a whole sermon on why I think screens are the new tobacco (they are though), but it’s undeniable that there is an addictive nature about them. I know, because I’m addicted and I can’t quit.

So far, we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping our boys away from screens. While they do watch TV at times, we’ve managed to avoid tablets and phones and video games (though we’ll probably get a NES Switch sometime soon because a life without Mario Kart is not a life well lived). 

Look, I understand that someday screens will be a part of their life. It’s the world we live in and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon if Apple and Meta have anything to say about it. Nevertheless, I still fear the loss of wonder and curiosity that comes from looking out a window on a car drive, from seeing the bug crawling between the crack on the sidewalk, from making up games like “hug tag” with their friends. Drawing long-form comic books with a pencil, and cherishing it as their most prized possession. Every single person reading this remembers what it was like before the iPhone and every single person knows it was better, and yet we’ve all agreed to its terms. This, despite the fact that study after study has shown a direct correlation between teen depression, anxiety, and suicide rates and the arrival of smartphones.

All I’m saying, is I want them to know the world, filtered through the raw beauty that it is and I’m scared that they’ll only know the version that it’s not. 

Then there’s the scourge of drugs. As some of you know, drugs hit my family incredibly hard over the last decade. I’ve seen first hand how it rips families apart, how it comes through whole communities like the grim reaper swinging for the fences (two of my best friends in the photo from my birthday post a few weeks ago are both dead at the hands of heroin). I fear it so much because I can’t understand it.

How you can pour so much love and care into a life from the moment they’re born until they become an adult, and yet one decision, one friend, one night at a party– can absolutely rip all of it away. I fear it because self-medicating, whether that’s with hard drugs, alcohol, and yes– even marijuana– has become such an easy solution to all of life’s problems. I fear it because I don’t understand how drugs and their effects can swell to a tidal wave that will destroy a fortress of love, no matter how sturdy it was built. 

So those are my fears. Well, some of them. There are plenty more. Really, my biggest fear is that I only have once chance with my kids and I’m going to mess it up somehow. I think about that a lot, probably too much. I hope that means I’m doing a good job.

Also, I have a fear of writing, or at least a fear of failure in showing up to do it, which is why I’m forcing myself to do this every week.

Course 4

Dessert: Neighborhood Cookout

I had what was apparently a panic attack a few weeks ago. Never had one, and have felt fine since, but I legit thought I was going to die. Which made me feel some things. The good news– I realized I wasn’t scared to die, at all. I was scared of leaving my wife and kids behind, but that was pretty much all of it.

What surprised me the most was what I regretted. It wasn’t the things I’ve done or didn’t do– I’ve lived an incredibly fulfilling life and have done just about everything I’ve wanted except see my kids grow old.

What I regretted most was that I haven’t helped others as much as I could have. So I’m going to try and do more of that going forward. Whether that’s volunteering, or being neighborly, or helping lead a pace group during my next marathon, I’m not sure. But I want to be more selfless. Maybe that just means being kind to a stranger, even if they roll their SUV through a crosswalk while walking my kids to school.

Just kidding, that gets a finger to the face and a hand to the hood. I’ll probably regret it.

End of Menu

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Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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