Here Is A Paper I Wrote

Don't even try to steal my ideas because these ideas don't apply to anyone else in the world ever. You'll see.

            A Fear Unnatural

            If I could ask a group of sixty people to guess my greatest fear, I can guarantee you that zero out of sixty would be able to guess it. Well, let me rephrase that. I can almost guarantee you that none would guess it. The only thing that makes me say “almost” is in case somebody tries to be outlandish and tries, “Pinecones.” I would then be flabbergasted that they had guessed it, and scared that they now know it. None of those are pleasant states of being, but they’re nothing compared to my psyche after being around pinecones themselves.

            Before you stop laughing, let me make you laugh more. My cousins and my brother laugh and affectionately call pinecones “pineapple ice cream cones,” emphasizing the first and last syllables. My high school counselor classified it as “medium-intense,” asking me a battery of questions, such as “do you go out of your way to avoid them?” and, more embarrassingly, “do you get a sudden urge to get away when you see one?” most of which I answered with a sullen “yes.” I run under pine trees and very seldom look up. I have labels for certain types of pinecones, like dead or flaky. But the more I think about what I’ve experienced with them, the more I realize that this isn’t going to be something that I can easily avoid.

            I remember one particular experience with pinecones that I’ll never forget. Pulling into the driveway of our house on a fresh November afternoon, my mother noticed that a Christmas decoration—which I remember as a light-up sign—fell into our garden.

            “Alex, can you grab that and set it back up?”

            Being young and full of energy and vinegar, I was more than happy to oblige. I scampered out of the car and into the garden, but what lay among the fallen leaves stopped me dead in my tracks. Three pinecones, fully grown and fully expanded, scales outstretched, sat right next to the sign.

            “Alex, what’s taking you so long?”

            Feeling old and full of caution and dread now, I slowly crept up to the sign, trying my very hardest to ignore the scaly abominations inches from my goal. Creeping closer, I tried to make myself believe they weren’t there by closing my eyes, but their very presence transcended my eyelids. Hey. Hey Alex. We’re HERE. But I had to push on. For the sign. For Christmas.

Ever closer now, I opened my eyes, and what I saw (literally now) stopped me dead in my tracks. I admit I was exaggerating the last time I said it, but here it was quite real and quite intense. And then Mother said:

            “Alex, what is...oh.”

            “Mom…” I replied, paralyzed.

            “Pick up the sign.”

            “Mom, I can’t…”

            “It’s not that hard, Alex!”

            “I can’t…”

            “Alex, you’re ridiculous. Go inside. I’ll take care of it.”

            Dashing out of the garden at a pace that rivaled the Starship Enterprise at Warp 5, I dodged my mom’s condescending glare, ducked under the half-open garage door, blew open the door to the house, and never looked back. I managed to make it out alive somehow, but at what cost? I had failed Mom. I had failed the sign.

I had failed Christmas.

And then, to top it all off, I was called ridiculous. And it wasn’t a cute kind of ridiculous, like a boy would say to a girl he likes. It was a ridiculous in the most literal sense of the word. But anyways, things like that don’t happen to your average Joe every day. And all of those things probably shouldn’t happen to me in the same day, right? I mean, who would want to fail their mothers? Who would want to fail Christmas?

Pinecones would, I guess.

It’s kind of ironic, though. You can’t go many places in the Christmas season without seeing pinecones. They’re synonymous with each other; Christmas tree, pine tree, pinecone. Funny how a symbol of Christmas would be ruining Christmas itself for me. But it’s true. Whenever I go Christmas shopping, I do two things: I look for nice things for nice people, and put my pinecone alert on code red. That’s why I try to avoid going Christmas shopping with other people; to avoid embarrassment on their part by avoiding embarrassment on my part. It’s immature, but at this point my fear is too hard to avoid. I look for them everywhere; I see them everywhere. Because of this, though, I know a thing or two about them. I know how to look at a pine tree and tell if the pinecones are going to fall. I know how to tell if it may rain soon by looking at a pinecone (the scales recede in moist air). I can even smell for pinecones. Most importantly, I know how to avoid them...but sometimes that can’t be helped.

Even though their presence scares me, any sort of action or movement with them scares me even more. Stationary, they’re not too bad; they aren’t going anywhere. Hopefully. In movement, however, is where the shit hits the fan and I start running. When a gust of wind blows and a pinecone skitters across the pavement, I’ll be within a 50-foot radius of it in a matter of seconds. When one ages and falls from a tree, I promise you I'll be within a 100-foot radius of it in a matter of milliseconds. The worst part about it is that people who try to help by moving one for me are doing the exact opposite of helping. I would much rather know that a pinecone is, for example, in a corner of a parking lot, as opposed to god-knows-where because somebody moved it.

“Hey Alex, I moved that pinecone for you,” they would say.

Okay…thanks. Where?

“Uh, I dunno, I just threw it somewhere.”

Wonderful.

Even worse are domesticated pinecones (or, as anybody and everybody else calls them, decorative pinecones). I guess the adage “bigger is better” applies to them too, because most I’ve seen are big enough to be murder weapons. My friend’s house once had decorative pinecones larger than The Incredible Hulk's fists. After he gets angry. After discretely telling my friend about my fear, I came back the next day to find them gone. I was relieved, but only for a short while; my friend told me he put them into storage. Wait, what? “I put them into storage, Alex.” Well that’s great, because they’re in the house. Somewhere. Just waiting for me to chance across them one day so they can…they can…wait.

Why am I scared of them?

I don’t even know what they would do to me. Prick me? Rub off their sap on me? Slap me with a harmless skzx if they fell on me? I’ve never figured out why I’m scared of pinecones. It can’t be obvious reasons, because I would’ve figured them out by now, and I’m pretty sure it can’t be un-obvious reasons, because I’ve thought about (and ruled out) way too many possibilities. So what does this leave me? It leaves me a full-fledged irrational fear in my hands. I really hate that label. Irrational. I think through too many things already, so to not be able to justify my greatest fear is just…irrational. But since it’s true, I will have to begrudgingly accept that title and live it through for the rest of my life. Unless I do something about it.

“Therapy!” they cry.

“Exposure!” they wail.

“No!” I shout.

I’ll be short about this: I can’t face it. Physically, I’m prepared to face them, because I like to think I’m pretty good at sprinting. Mentally, however, I am nowhere near close to facing them. Looking at a pinecone makes my heart rate spike, and seeing one in motion gives me stress enough to knock off a few days from my life span. The worst part about this is that I can’t remember where my fear started, so therapy that deals with my past is a far cry. But I can only imagine myself in a different therapeutic setting:

We sit at a table, facing each other. The doctor slams a pinecone on the desk.

“What do you think of this?! How does this make you feel?!”

I scream, “It makes me feel like DYING!!!” and I kick back the chair, flip over the table, and dash to the door, only to find that it’s locked from the outside.

Laughing maniacally, face contorted with glee at the prospect of therapy like this, the doctor pulls from under his robe several more pinecones—homing high-velocity pinecones!­—and throws them at me.

“Kikikiki!” the pinecones laugh in harmony as they fly at full speed towards me. “You can’t escape us!”

I yell, “I’ll show you escape!” and dash around the windowless room, ducking pinecones at the very last inch as they pin themselves to the wall like arrows. It’s only after a minute of action when one makes contact. I scream in agony, slowing down, as more and more pinecones stick to me. Flailing and struggling, I fall to the floor, and the last thing I hear is the doctor’s laughter as I pass out from shock and exhaustion.

End Scene.

Point is, I’ll have to face it one day, but, as my depiction of a therapy session implies, I’m not ready. Will I ever be ready? That’s a really good question. Maybe I’ll just deal with it for the rest of my life, avoiding pine trees and living inside, being a reclusive monk. Or maybe I’ll move somewhere without pinecones, like…Antarctica. I’m not going to falsely tell people that I’m not afraid of them. In fact, that has the exact opposite outcome; my aunt, after telling her that I really wasn’t afraid of pinecones anymore (really! I'm serious!), put a large tub of football-sized pinecones in the main room. For kindling, she said. It’s still there.

My mom thinks it’s ridiculous. My dad laughs and taunts me with them. My aunts and cousins make jokes about it. Whenever I tell people for the first time I’m scared of pinecones, they either laugh or test me. My ex-girlfriend’s sister did both, immediately shoving a nearby bowl full of decorative pinecones at me and laughing at my reaction (on a side note, the bowl was the first thing I noticed when I walked into the room). Is my fear worth it? Is any fear worth emasculation and scorn? As much as I hate to admit it, it isn’t. Something so crippling shouldn’t be happening to me, especially if it’s caused by something as silly-sounding as a pinecone. But at this point, life without my fear is nothing but a passing thought.