Being a Pussy: A Confession

I have never had a knife pulled on me, found a burglar in my house in the middle of the night, or even broken a bone in my body. In fact, nothing bad has ever happened to me. Whereas you’d be inclined to think that’s ‘a good thing’, one look at this picture of me on a rollercoaster is enough to convince you otherwise. See, whilst other people know the intense, nauseating pain of breaking a leg, or the bowel-wrenching horror of discovering your house has been broken into I have, hitherto, lived a fairly cosseted life. The most frightening thing that has ever happened to me in my formative years was wearing white swimming shorts on a school trip to the Loire Valley which turned see-through in water. My tolerance level for fear was never tested and so has remained unnaturally low. The result being that I am now, and forever will be, a complete pussy.

You only need to look at the other people in the picture to realize that I wasn’t in such a dangerous situation as I appear. My friend Ben, sitting next to me, is a good bit more ‘streetwise’ – to the point that he probably doesn’t say words like 'streetwise'. He didn’t even flinch on Saw (I saw the picture and even watched the video). He is so completely lacking in respect for the power of this ride to frighten him that he’s flicking the V’s at it. And the guy in front – although you can’t see his whole outfit, you can see enough to tell he’s wearing a full tracksuit. He’s not going to be a stranger to the old ‘fight or flight’ scenario. Indeed, he’s so used to far more dangerous situations that he’s comfortable enough to cheer away quite happily with both hands in the air. And he was on the front row.

No, I’m afraid my central nervous system is nowhere near as robust as I might want it to be. Hard as I try, I’m now hardwired to become completely terrified at the drop of a hat. Should I ever encounter something that is genuinely truly fatally scary, like being woken up at gunpoint by a leprotic rapist, I can’t even imagine how I might react. I think it could only rank as being so infinitely off my scale of fear that it would in fact turn negative and leave me cool as a cucumber and not the least bit panicked. Either that or I’d just piss my pants.