The other night, my friend Matt and I were sitting around discussing fears. He wanted to do a blog post about fears, but thought his were too clichéd and ordinary. After a short conversation, we decided my fears were much more interesting, so here you go, a brief account on handling your fears, no matter how unconventional they may be.

Everyone has fears. This is a simple fact of life. Really, if you say you don’t have any, you’re just lying to yourself. I have a couple, but they’re fairly uncommon. In fact, statistically speaking, the four most prevalent fears, in no particular order, are death, public speaking, spiders, and heights. I’m cool with death, because it’s going to happen whether I’m afraid of it or not. Public speaking isn’t something that I struggle with [anymore]. I fly a lot, so heights are also not a concern, and spiders are miniscule in size. Now, a spider like one of those Harry Potter acromantula, and then we’re talking some fear.

No, my fears are a little more eccentric. For instance, number one on the list is taxidermy. It’s something I’ve struggled with for years. It used to be so bad that eating at Texas Roadhouse was out of the question. My parents and I are certain that this stems from some awful childhood trauma, but the exact nature of the incident is a bone of contention. The tamest of the theories involves a life-size robotic tyrannosaurus, and the most unusual contains a reanimated deer corpse. I wish that was a joke, but it isn’t. Most people think that it’s not that big a problem, until you consider that I lived more than half of my life in Montana, a state where it is considered normal to have multiple hunting trophies in your home. Years later, I’m finally at the point in my life where I can handle it, as long as I know in advance exactly where the animal in question is. It can’t sneak up on me, or panic ensues. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s how I manage.

Next to taxidermy, my fear of geese is much more reasonable. A lot of the time people who don’t like birds don’t like all birds. For me, it’s just geese. The big ugly white geese that live on farms and are popular food at Christmas. As a young child, my family lived on a farm with a flock of just these terrible white geese. Every day, when I ventured outside of the house, the geese would attack, chasing me around and around the house until my parents rescued me. They like to think of it as character building; I like to think of it as conditioning fears into your impressionable three year old. I’m not often near geese, so it’s not such a tragedy to handle.

That’s just about it. I think I’m fortunate to only have those! Oh, clowns too. But that’s normal. Everyone hates clowns. What are your phobias? How do you manage them? Are yours normal, or are they unusual?