On occasion, I have been subjected to gentle teasing due to an irrational fear or two that I may or may not be harboring. The best example is my complete terror regarding encountering sharks and whales. I have never been in a situation in which I would possibly encounter a shark or whale (unless you could the whale watching tour my family and I took in Maine the summer I graduated...but that was a completely different situation) and I most likely never will be in such a situation because, um, well, THEY TERRIFY ME. I also have issues with deep, open water. So the combination of those two things pretty much ensures that I will never have to escape a shark attack. Or a whale attack. If those actually happen. Not sure about that.
But the negative possibility that I will be mauled by a shark isn't my point. My point is that I have one other fear that is irrational to the point of being flat out ridiculous. Asinine. Absurd. But I had to face this fear today and I came out relatively unscathed, so I thought I needed to share my story of triumph over the foolish fears of the world. So here it goes:
Every time I walk through a detecting device of some kind (metal detectors, anti-shoplifting devices, magic library book detectors) I hold my breath, filled with apprehension that the alarm will sound and crossing my fingers that it won't. Because that would be horrifying.
Now before you judge me too harshly (unless, of course you already have, in which case this next paragraph will be completely useless), let me explain where I believe this paranoia stems from. As a child, I was notorious in my family for setting the metal detectors off at the airport. Every. Single. Time. I always had something metal on my person and it wasn't until the age of twelve or thirteen that it finally occurred to me to just not wear a belt to the airport because I would inevitably forget to take it off and the alarm would sound and I would be subjected to the horror of being patted down by a disgruntled TSA agent. To this day, I refuse to go to the airport wearing a belt.
This fear was always piqued when I shopped at the Forever 21 in my hometown. Whoever designed this particular anti-shoplifting device must have been convinced that standing anywhere in the general vicinity of the exit while holding merchandise was intent upon stealing something, because it would go off--a horribly annoying, resounding grunt of an alarm--if you were less than six feet away from it. AWFUL. And libraries. Don't even get me started on libraries. It's unfortunate that libraries--some of my very favorite buildings in existence--contain a device that fills me with so much trepidation. When exiting the library, a stack of freshly checked out books in my arms, I would silently repeat the mantra don't go off, don't go off as I approached the door. This practice has followed me from my childhood to my teenage years to, well, now. And it is this particular situation that brings me to my actual story.
Now, this library alarm setting off story is particularly heinous because it caught me completely off guard. Not only had I checked out these particular books a week before but I was also entering the library as opposed to exiting it. I walked through the detectors and the alarm sounded. I glanced back to see if anybody else had walked through at the same time as me, sure that it couldn't possibly be my books that set it off. The security guard caught my eye and asked me to walk back through the detectors.
I did and it went off again. Oh, the horror.
"Do you have any library materials in your posession?" he asked me, as though I were carrying lethal weapons of mass destruction or other items that were equally as taboo.
"Yes," I said, approaching the desk. "But they're all checked out."
"I'm going to have to take a look at them," he said.
I sighed. "I have, like, seven books in here," I said, gesturing to my backpack. This was the truth. I am currently knee deep in research for a paper I am supposed to be writing right now at this very second and have been lugging a mini library around for me for the last week or so.
"Just let me see your ID," he said. "That might be easier."
I slid my ID out of my wallet and handed it to him. It was at this point that I noticed that his name tag declared that his name was Ladd. No joke. I had to work very hard to stifle the urge to ask him if he had a sister named Lassie. It was quite the struggle for me, but luckily it provided a moment of comic relief in the midst of one of my worst nightmares come to life.
Ladd swiped my ID card and tried to look very official as he viewed my official record of library patronage. "Yeah, I'm going to need to see the books," he said.
Another sigh. I spent the next minute and a half fishing books out of my overly stuffed backpack while simultaneously pushing my contraband bagel (being the rebel I am, I had zero intention of eating it in the Snack Zone, hence its contraband status) deeper into the recesses of my bag. I had no way of knowing if Ladd was one of the chill guards who didn't care if students broke the eating rules or one of the cranky ones who made students throw away their Jamba Juice instead of giving them three seconds to finish it. I wasn't willing to compromise my bagel.
The next bit felt like an eternity as Ladd scanned and swiped each of my recently rescued books one by one. He thought he knew which one was the culprit, but wanted to check them all "just to be safe." I appreciated this, however annoying it was, because there was no way I wanted to have to go through this experience again. Ever. He finally finished and I stuffed the books back into my backpack, accidentally squishing my bagel in the process. "Am I good?" I asked.
"Yeah, you should be fine."
Should be fine? Come on, Ladd. We're talking about my deepest, most irrational fears here and you are doing nothing to assuage them. I eyed the detector warily before deciding to be an adult and walking through.
Silence of the most beautiful kind accompanied me. No beeping. No clanging. No voice calling for me to come back. Just silence.
Victory.
No comments:
Post a Comment