Fear comes in all shapes and horrors

I miss being scared. I miss that adrenaline surge I used to get watching scary movies, especially during Halloween.
The tongue scene in “Nightmare on Elm Street,” while campy, elicited a genuine and embarrassing yelp that decimated any pretense of machismo I had at that date-night movie.

When twins appeared at the end of a long narrow hallway in “The Shining” I watched the rest of the movie through spread fingers beneath a blanket. (Even today I can’t make my way down a long hotel hallway without being a little creeped out.)

But over the years reason takes over and the movies that use to give me chills now just make me pshaw (well, except for “The Shining”) for how improbable and unrealistic they are. Fear just isn’t what it used to be.

Now, as an adult, it’s no longer heart pounding so much as it is gut wrenching and mind wracking.

When the cell phone buzzes and vibrates across the nightstand at 2:31 a.m. my first thought isn’t that it might be a demon calling to capture my soul. The moment just before I pick up the cell is filled with an agonizing series of images involving police, doctors and coroners calling to tell me that a loved one is in the hospital or dead.

When I’m at my mother’s home and she walks into the living room from the kitchen and she can’t find her glasses or car keys I don’t wonder if a malevolent spirit is at work, taking items from their assigned places and stashing them in the Great Beyond, I fret and wonder if her simple forgetfulness is a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. Is she showing signs of slow degradation? Am I going there too?

Walking my dog along a dimly lit street at 10:30 p.m. doesn’t fill me with the dread of being chased by a masked axe murderer. Instead my fear originates in the headlamps half a block away coming toward me. Is the driver drunk, will he plow into cars and send one crashing on top of my head? Is he sending a text and too distracted to see me crossing the street? Will it be some punk kid who has a gun and shoots at the person who is in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The same voice that tells me a demon escaping from hell to reclaim my soul is not only improbable but impossible is the same voice that tells me the odds are in my favor when crossing the street and walking the dog.

It’s the same voice that says while Alzheimer’s (and myriad other diseases) are real possibilities there are scores of smart people working on treatments and cures every day.

But still the anxiety of those real life fears lingers and while the rationale voice tells me things will work out fine, it also whispers, “But man, wouldn’t it be nice if all our fears were make believe like in the movies?”