Brains Are Weird

Or maybe I should just speak for myself.

While I was out walking tonight, I passed within about 18 inches of a big white pickup truck parked at the curb. Just as I was even with the front bumper, I guess somebody inside the house hit the clicker, because the truck's lights flashed and it honked, and I damn near peed myself.

But then came the weird part: Suddenly I had this incredibly vivid memory of how terrified I was of car grilles when I was little. Terrified, even being fully aware they weren't really going to suck me in and devour me; but I could just picture it. I can remember giving a very wide berth to parked cars when I was small because their front ends were so incredibly menacing. And they growled - radiator fans, I suppose. Horrible!

As I walked on, reassembling my skin and trying to get my heartrate back out of the sudden-cardiac-arrest danger zone, I could vividly feel that terror all over again - something I haven't thought about it in ages, and would certainly have assumed was gone without trace.

Ah well. Nothing a few years of therapy won't fix right up.