Just Thinking...

[Guest]

I was watching an episode of "The Universe" on TiVo yesterday, and they were explaining black holes in an analogy. They showed a picture of a swimmer swimming tword a spinning whirlpool, and likened the forces that would suck the swimmer into the whirlpool to the gravitational forces around a black hole.

 

As I watched the swimmer swimming in the pool, I thought of when my sister and I would visit our grandparents as kids, we would go to the local pool and swim all day. They were members of a hotel club that would allow you to swim in their pool if you were a local. My grandfather would point to the drain at the bottom of the deep end and tell us that if we swam directly over it it would suck us down and hold us to the bottom of the pool. He had heard about it on the news.

 

For years and years, we were terrified of swimming over the drain in the deep end. My sister wouldn't even venture past the 5 foot mark for years. I'd go around it, but never over it. As I got older and figured it out, I would tease my sister by diving down and touching it, but she still remianed terrified of it despite me proving it was not true. And I must admit, even now at age 30, sometimes while swimming over the drain in a pool, I think of my grandfather and my childhood terror of the drain.

 

So I'm wondering if anyone else here has some irrational fear unrelated to xtianity? I'm not still afraid of drains, but I still think of my grandfather's warning just about every time I see a pool drain. In many ways, I think it can illustrate how even as adults, the fear of hell can keep you out of the "deep end" where the "big kids" are playing.

 

Any thoughts?

[Vigile]

That reminds me. When I was a kid my grandparents had a creek in their back yard. It was fairly shallow and we used to wade out and catch crawdads. There was a deep hole (about 4 feet I guess) in one section of the creek that we were warned not to go near as we might drown. I was terrified of that hole and had recurring dreams about a cat family that would drag me down the creek bank and into the hole. I would always wake just before I drowned.

 

Like you, I lost my fear of the water and love water sports above all other sports. I'm pretty much a fish. I also don't believe I have any residual fears from xianity anymore. I'm pretty jaded anymore, having faced my fears straight on, and what I was once has no hold over me that I can recall.

[LithaB]

When I was little we had an old refrigerator that would make a loud, roaring sound when the motor cycled on. This would invariably happen at 2:00 in the morning when I had to walk past the refrigerator to get to the bathroom. I was convinced that a large alligator lived under the refrigerator, and was lying in wait for little girls with small bladders.

 

Ironically the old refrigerator finally did attack me. There was too much heavy food in the shelves of the door, so when I opened the fridge to get some milk the whole thing tipped over on top of me. The instant surge of adrenaline gave me sufficient strength to hold it off of me until an adult could run to my assistance (I was a skinny little girl with no upper arm strength) but most of the contents slid out and smashed my feet.

 

40 years later I still have a scar on my big toe, but no lingering fear of refrigerators.