Phobia

[featherynscale]

Some people are afraid of spiders, snakes, great heights, and so on. We encounter these people every day, and although we may mock them for their fear, deep down, we respect the fear. This is because these fearful attitudes show a distinct evolutionary advantage over the sort of attitudes that cause one to, oh, say, want to pick up rattlesnakes and cuddle them and pull their itsy-bitsy rattle-wattles. Over millions of years, there've been folks who looked at spiders and went "ACK! Getitawayfromme!" and others that looked at teeth glistening with venom and went, "Ooh....shiny", and I think we can all come to our own conclusions abiut which group was more likely to contribute to the gene pool. I'm not sure at what point primitive man's survival was aided by not standing up to give a speech in front of the tribe, but hey.

Anyway, the point of the thing is, I'm not particularly scared of those things. The point of the thing is that I'm phobic about pregnancy. Like, I don't want to ever for any reason actually be pregnant, but also, I'm wildly uncomfortable talking about pregnancy, being around babies, being around pregnant women, being in the baby food aisle at the store -- any of it. I will be the last person ever to show up at your baby shower. It's not that I don't love you, it's just that it's a little like asking Winston Smith to climb into the tank full of rats. So I'm thinking, where many other phobias could potentially be evolutionary advantages, mine is more of a large blinking neon sign reading, "You! Out of the Gene Pool!".

By and large, this is fine by me. Every once in a while, though, it's embarrassing. And it also means that I can have some Truly Special nightmares. Case in point, I can take in all the scaly-monster maniac-with-a-chainsaw unnameable-abomination films I like and never suffer for it, but last night I had a brilliant nightmare which could only have come from watching Superman Returns:

In the dream, I had been away, possibly at school, for a year or two, and I came home to find that kittenpants had just had a baby. Now, this was pretty alarming, because I know her and the way she is and it seemed like this couldn't possibly have been her idea. As the dream progresses, I discover that the baby is aging much too quickly, like the Taltos-kids in the Mayfair Witches. It's three months old and it's saying things to me like, "I know you. You're the woman who gets in bed with mommy and daddy." So that's a little more horrible, and then, the other thing occurs to me, which is that triadruid is fixed. I've been away, I thought, but what are the chances he had that reversed? And have I had sex with him since? This line of inquiry was clearly No Good. So I asked, "Whose kid is it?", knowing that this is terribly rude and will almost certainly net me an answer I don't want to hear. She tells me a long story about an ex-boyfriend who has come back and who she slept with once, more or less by accident, and how when she found out there would be a kid her father tried to talk her out of having it and all of this sort of thing. triadruid was perfectly aware that it wasn't his kid, but was very gracious about the whole thing. I was horrified. I was just getting to the part of the dream where we were going to go out to dinner, but had to find a babysitter when I woke up making a strangled sort of coughing sound. I'm still not quite over the residual ick. Ick.

Comments

[infintysquared.livejournal.com]

When I was out biking earlier today, I actually pondered the first paragraph of this post a little. After I mulled it over a bit, I came to what seems like a reasonable hypothesis.

While the arachnophobia has very clear and immediate evolutionary advantages, the fear of public speaking does serve a more subtle purpose.

When primates began making complex social structures, they fell into a fairly clear "leader/follower" dichotomy. It's pretty clear that a leader needs to be forward and vocal about getting stuff done. However, most groups need more followers than leaders, and if the followers are as forward and vocal as the leaders, then they're merely challenging the leadership instead of forwarding the group's welfare on the whole.

So, we've bred to have a handful of brash outspoken leaders, and a majority of reserved, less public followers.


You can fill in the gaps yourself if you like, this is just nutshelling my meandering thoughts from the trip. I like going out biking or walking, and letting my mind wander. I get some of my best thinking done that way. I should start carrying a notebook again.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Good thought -- also, I think that if you are the one who stands up and has ideas, you are the most likely to be bashed in the head with a rock if the idea turns out to be dumb.

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

That is the same thought I had...

[lordkalkin.livejournal.com]

I love you, if only because I too can't have children because I hate them and they make me nervous. Thankfully, my girlfriend is also afraid of pregnancy, so we don't have to worry over all of this having kids nonsense as long as we avoid it in our other relationships as well.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I would go so far as to say I hate children -- in fact, I am pleased to be the Auntie Most Likely To Take The Children For Their First Tattoo to saffronhare and agrnmn's daughters. But I do stand firmly on the liking of Other People's Children. They do make me nervous, though. Anything that is likely to make sudden unexpected noises makes me a bit twitchy, in fact.

[orcjohn.livejournal.com]

Being an Evil Uncle/Aunt is the best. We get to wind up the kids, then send them home with mom/dad. Plus we get to go do the "fun" stuff that mom and dad would NOT approve of. *grin*

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

and us parents LOVE LOVE LOVE non-breeders who are willing to take our kids for even ten minutes FAR THE FUCK AWAY from us. bless you all. you, like fat-bottomed girls, make the rockin world go round.

[malvito.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure at what point primitive man's survival was aided by not standing up to give a speech in front of the tribe, but hey

Well, hey ... it's as clear as the sea. In Days Of Yore, when Urg, The First Cave Public Speaker, said something critical against Orp, The First Big-Eared Elected Resident Of The White Cave, he was pelted not with tomatoes and grapefruit, which had not been discovered yet, but by Large Stones. Which resulted in Massive Injuries.

Fear of public speaking is a genetic throwback to reaction to this development.

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

i enjoy your kid/pregnancy phobia quite frankly. as a conscious breeder--because those damn Xians are trying to breed us smart peepul out--I honor all my non-breeding friends for not breeding, and for doing what it takes to not-breed. i hope my breeding status at the moment or in the past has not made you uncomfortable, or at least not TOO uncomfortable.

given all this, I understand why this dream brought you icky feelings. i'd pat yer head, but my ginormous stomach would get in the way, and i don't think that would make you feel any better.

ps how was the constellation and the Lovely Keter? I missed any posts about the event.

Maybe it was for the best...

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

"I'm wildly uncomfortable talking about pregnancy, being around babies, being around pregnant women, being in the baby food aisle at the store -- any of it."

The job thing, it is called a Pre-Natal clinic...

I'm just saying. :-)

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

I was much the same way for most of my life until I got involved with a man who really loved kids. I came to see them through his eyes, so to speak.

Doesn't mean I dig on kids any better, but it gave me the ability ot be around them and not have my flesh crawl.


D.