Having Courage Means We Have to Do It Scared

I was nine years old when a toned-down version of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt began airing on network television, and I was absolutely terrified of the opening sequence.

Having courage means we have to do it scared

The old black-and-white TV in my childhood bedroom had two knobs on it but, alas, no remote control. If and when said super creepy TV show came on, I had to walk right up to the screen and turn one of the knobs next to it in order to change the channel.

Instead of confronting and correcting the problem myself, I was always paralyzed with fear and fled from my room, begging my parents to change the channel for me.

This was the pattern of my childhood. Fear. Flight. Repeat.

I was painfully scared of many things as a kid: Fourth of July bottle rockets catching our roof on fire, getting on and off escalators at the mall, the Gremlins movies, and the Jabberwocky in the 1985 Alice in Wonderland miniseries, just to name a few.

I was even terrified to trick-or-treat on Halloween. I do not like to be scared, even if I know it’s all pretend, and I worried I would end up receiving the poisoned candy I saw on the news. My mother must have shared my fears, because we typically ended up trick-or-treating at retail stores in the mall instead of in our neighborhood.

One summer, I found myself in a hospital emergency room with my mom after a week of heart palpitations and extreme insomnia made her think I was sick. When the EKG and blood test results came back completely normal, the ER doctor asked me a few questions and determined that I was suffering from a panic attack triggered by my fear of flying by myself the next week.

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