Catastrophe! Calamity!
Dissecting my lifelong relationship with catastrophic thinking
Even as a small child, I’d watch others bound over steep hills without a care, or try to make the swing go all the way around the pole, or jump into murky water with no idea of what was below it, my brow furrowed in a constant worried expression.
Don’t they know they could die?
If you know me personally — even if it’s not all that well — you probably know that I am naturally a catastrophic thinker.
It’s simultaneously not something I love about myself, and also something I think makes me extra smart and prepared. I mean, you can’t be a catastrophic thinker without the ability to think of a million different scenarios, even if most of them are awful.
Of course, it doesn’t help me feel good. Let’s say my partner has gone out with his buddies (something he basically never does) and is not yet back, and it’s late, and is not answering his phone.
My brain:
He was in a car accident, or run over.
He was kidnapped.
Someone told him a horrible but plausible lie about me and he believed it and has blocked me and will never return.
He had a heart attack while walking alone in a dark alley and it will be days before someone finds him.
He met someone much more amazing than me and decided to run away with her that very night.
Alien abduction/sucked into another dimension.
NO! Bring him baaaaaack! (Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash)
See? None of those are nice things. Actually, they’re downright awful, and they suck all the dopamine right out of me, replacing it all with cortisol. It’s literally torture, and I can’t help spinning out.
When I do hear from him, things are obviously fine: his phone was in his backpack and he forgot to take it back out while he was catching up with his friends. Much less dramatic than an alien abduction.
Why does my brain naturally go to these terrible places, especially when nothing truly horrible — at least not to the extent that I ever imagine — has ever actually happened to me?
I actually have a theory, and it has to do with my dad.
Once when I was little, maybe six or seven, my dad, sister and I were getting ready to go over to my grandmother, Mimi’s, house. My sister and I spent easily half our time at her house, as both our parents worked.
And it was always glorious. Her home was clean and well-stocked. She kept a plastic swimming pool for us that we’d often fill up with water for a swim, as well as bicycles and roller skates we’d go up and down the sidewalk in. She always had chocolate milk in the fridge, and we had our own room complete with a trundle bed that had fresh sheets on them every time we showed up for an overnight stay.
The smell of her freshly washed and fluffed bathroom towels is still one of my favorite in the world, and I’ve spent my adult life trying to figure out what detergent she used, though it must have been a combination of that and just the general smell of all of her stuff.
Anyway. One morning, we were getting ready to go see her. This was in the 1980s, before answering machines or call waiting. My dad tried calling her (on our rotary phone, of course, and I still have her number memorized: 753-8136! 752-0935 was our house number.) and she didn’t pick up. He tried a second time, then a third time. No answer. He became agitated.
“I don’t know why she’s not picking up. Maybe something’s happened. Maybe she had a heart attack and is lying on the kitchen floor. Maybe she died.”
“What?! How could she have died?!”
“Well, she’s in her 60s, she lives alone, anything can happen! We’re going to have to just go over there and see what we find, and hope for the best.”
My little brain just about exploded. What did he mean that terrible things could happen to the people we love when we’re not around? This was the moment that the realization that catastrophe could strike at any time entered my psyche.
We hopped in the car and drove to her house over the approximately seven minutes it took to get there. As it turned out, she was just outside working on her garden and hadn’t heard the phone, but seeing her alive felt like a miracle.
“Oh, John,” she said to my dad with a scowl.
She worked hard to reassure my freaked out ass that she was just fine, and that nothing would happen to her.
But the seed had been planted, and I’ve never dislodged it.
Why are some people natural worry-worts? My dad certainly is: he doesn’t even want candles on his birthday cake because he thinks they’ll somehow engulf him in flames, and considers it an act of bravery to go to the candlelight Christmas Eve service at his church because of the real risk, in his mind, that the the whole place could burn down with everyone inside.
Has he ever had a scary experience with fire? Even a close call? No.
I think the fact that some people are just like this has a lot more to do with the necessities of communities rather than of individuals.
Yes, you need some people willing to fling themselves out there without a care to discover new horizons. But you need people like me and my dad to keep them from getting killed, to temper the enthusiasm.
“Temperer of enthusiasm” is definitely the less glamorous job, but it’s important, and it makes me really, really good at baby-proofing people’s houses for them (“What could go wrong? Ha! Let me count the ways…”).
For every Jack, you need a Piggy. For every Frodo, a Sam. For every Phoebe, a Monica. For every Frankie, a Grace. I’ll stop now.
My point is, as the old adage goes, “it takes all kinds.” You need people with naturally conservative and cautious personalities to balance out the kinds of people who aspire to host Jackass. Without either, we wouldn’t survive as a species, or move forward as a species.
So while my politics are progressive, my personality is naturally conservative. I follow rules because I believe in them, and when I don’t follow them, it’s because I’ve thought long and hard about their morality.
But even so, I don’t want anarchy; I want better rules.
So thanks for reading, y’all. If you don’t hear from me in a while, it’s probably fine. But you should keep in mind that it’s also possible I was sucked into another dimension. Try not to worry, though — it (usually) really doesn’t do much good.
Of course the naturally cautious person is the one who leaves home and moves to Mexico--alone, I think--at the age of about 20. Sound like anyone you know?
When I was in second grade, my teacher Mrs. Register wrote on one of my report cards: "David is a bright little boy. But he worries too much."