Convergent Phobias

Yesterday evening RWT & I went out to dinner with some friends to Firefly. Since they do not have valet service during mid-week and we did not want to deal with the hassle of parking the car, we opted to take the metro. Simple? No. For me, metro is never a decision to be taken lightly.

While not exactly claustrophobic, I get extremely uncomfortable in places with limited egress. It does not matter how big or small they are. You can squeeze me into a large cardboard box and it is no big deal (unless it is made of particularly strong cardboard and you tape it shut!). In fact, for nearly my whole 3rd grade year, the favorite pastime of my friend and I was to spend hours sitting in a large cardboard box, playing Crazy Eights and eating pretzels with mustard. So it is not really a size-thing.

But you won’t be able to get me into anything but the shallowest of cave – no matter how roomy on the inside (I certainly won’t be listening to the Stalacpipe Organ at Luray Caverns anytime soon). I don’t like underground parking garages. Or going too deep underwater (no scuba diving for me). I’ve even been known to get short of breath when in the middle of a large, crowded room (I much prefer a table near the door, please).

The worst was when I worked as a corrosion control/paint expert and I had to inspect underground storage tanks. It would take all of my willpower to climb down the ladder into the tank. All of the tanks I inspected were huge, but every moment I spent inside, 98% of my attention was focused on fact that the exit was an itty-bitty circle high up at the top of a ladder. Ten minutes was about my limit, then I’d start to hyperventilate and flee the scene.

So taking the metro… ugh. Underground. No quick way out. And, to only make matters worse… in the D.C. area, the access to nearly all the metro stations is by escalator. Aaaack. Another phobia. Perhaps, when I was a child, my mother was just too diligent in her warnings to be careful not to get shoes/clothing/body parts stuck in the mashing escalator teeth. But to this day, navigating on and off an escalator is a feat that requires great concentration and bravery. Of course, there are elevators at the metro stations (if they are working), but, really, you’ve got to be kidding me.

The first five years we lived in this area, I never took the metro. However, about a year ago, after much encouragement and mental preparation, I finally took the plunge. RWT is wonderful and works diligently to keep me distracted from thinking about how I am deep within the bowels of the earth trapped in a very long, dark tunnel (even when the twenty-somethings sitting behind us start talking about what it would be like to be riding the metro and be claustrophobic and how one would want to pound on the doors screaming to be let out if the train suddenly stopped between stations). So now I am proud to say that I’ve ridden the metro. Four trips at that! I even have my own metro farecard.

Luckily, metro-riding does not also involve large areas of grating that I have to walk across, see-through stairs, crickets or needles (well, there probably are a few needle users on some of the trains, but as long as no one is poking me with any, I’m fine). Those would completely send me over the edge… or in search of parking.