I look around, and I don't recognize fear in others' eyes... Am I the only one who's scared?

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils maslivend@sbcglobal.net

I’m scared. I’m really, really scared. Not the “run, run, flail your arms, stand with your whole body backed against the door – though you know your body is no match for what’s outside–” scared!

No. It’s worse than that! It’s a never-imagined, never-recognized, kind of scared. I look around, and I don’t recognize fear in others’ eyes… “Am I the only one who’s scared?” I don’t see that fear in their manner, their behavior… or hear it in their voices… Yet I’m deathly afraid!

When I was a child, a mirror used to frighten me – no, not because I was so hideous! I’d hold it and look down into it so that it seemed each step would send me hurling down into the basement – and we didn’t even have a basement! I don’t think anybody had a basement in the country.

Anyway, I’d play that trick on myself… and it worked! Kids’ll do all kinds of silly stuff just for the heck of it! I always managed to get from one room to the next without falling. Yet, I kept doing it, until I grew up and recognized my foolish ways.

Now, hair gray, more years behind me than in front, I still see danger where most won’t. I still fear what most people don’t. I fear, however, what is ahead for my children, and their children… for my nieces and nephews, my ex-students’ grandkids… the two little boys who live next door… and the slimy little babies forced “outside” with the last push from an exhausted mother.

Yet, folks say, over and over, “There is nothing to fear.”

I don’t believe them! There is too much evidence, too many things are “falling into place.” Too many abnormalities are becoming the norm, and too many people – including those in a position to address those issues – refuse to do so… in fact, refuse to even acknowledge what is in our very faces!

Yes… The. Planet. Is. Warming. No matter how you deny it, the truth is there – and what are we doing about it? Dare we change our ways? Dare we cut down on waste? Refuse plastic? Use paper bags, then spend time folding them for reuse, again, and again… or, heaven forbid, use a cloth bag for 10, 20, or more years?

That’s what I’ve done… and do… but then, as I’ve heard so many times, “Mis’ Nevils crazy!”

Wrong answer! Ms. Nevils cares about more than me!

Story Posted:03/22/2019