Okay...I admit it...I used to be afraid of the wind (past tense). Hasn't everyone gone through a phase like that? No? Well, I'm happy to report that I never cowered in fear because of a thunderstorm.... unless of course that same storm was accompanied by a little wind - and lightning. So how about those other, "usual-suspect" fears? Snakes? Yes. Rats? Yes. Sharks? Who isn't scared of them? Plebeians? Ick. Radioactivity? Yes, yes. Crowded elevators? Affirmative. Is that so unwarranted? But this was a so-called irrational fear, a phobia. I used to believe that my house was going to blow over, used to imagine trees being uprooted and cars being tossed around in the sky, used to anticipate windows imploding, dishes shattering, walls collapsing, furniture overturning, cliffs eroding, people fleeing, animals howling and my beloved basketball hoop crashing down to the ground. Every time the breeze would appear, I would begin mildly hyper-ventilating, pacing up and down, chanting my "why? why? why?" mantra. But I had cause. What the heck can you do on a windy day besides fly a kite? Well...make a long story short, the weather apocalypse never came to my hometown; but unfortunately did arrive elsewhere. It was always the midwest or the south and I used to be mesmerized by visions of tornadoes and hurricanes on the news, so what was I getting so worked up about growing up in California? We had smog, heat-waves, earthquakes, mud slides, brush fires, traffic jams, zodiac killers - a myriad of indigenous horrors to deal with! Why couldn't I cling to my neurotic clown phobia or my fear of polyester? It was those dreaded Santa Ana storms that arrive during the late summer and continue into the fall, at the peak of fire season.
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