> > > YOU HAVE A FEAR OF CLOWNS TOO?!?!? Actually, mine is a fear of clown dolls, and was brought on by movies such as Poltergeist, but still...
> > >
> > > Don "The Monkey'Someone to share my secret pain... Ahhhh...'man" Jackson
> >
> > I don't really *fear* clowns, they just freak me out sometimes. > -fly"would YOU like a nice little balloon giraffe? how cuuuuuuuuute"ing"bleh"cats
>
> I read in the Pop-Up Book of Phobias that the fear of clowns is caused by adults telling kids
> not to talk to strangers, and then forcing them to interact with a painted, hollering freak.
>
> I was always scared of dolls. I felt sure that if I looked at them at night, they would turn their pale faces to me and fix me with a glassy and unblinking gaze of death. Every night I would turn my dolls to face the wall, and every day my mother would turn them outwards again. Before I knew that she was the one moving them, I was terrified that they had moved THEMSELVES.
>
> --Jez"New from Mattel:Lizzie Borden Action Figure"zika

Okay, we all have phoolish fobias. Here's mine:
I am afraid of cranes. No, not the big tall birds. I'm afraid of those tall, steel, machines with a long arm that has cables and pulleys and a big hook. You see them around all kinds of construction projects. When I was 16, I walked down to the waterfront where they were using a crane on a barge to pull steel pilings out of the bottom of the harbor. They were removing an old pier so they could build a better one. They used a torch to cut a hole in the top end of the piling and then hooked it with the crane. Then a powerful steam engine on the barge started pulling the crane up until the piling pulled out. Then it stacked it on the bank. There were several of us spectators standing near the stack of pilings when the crane started pulling the next one. But then the control handle broke leaving the steam engine running full blast. The operator and others on the barge ran for their lives (I am not making this up!). Some actually jumped in the water, because the barge was beginning to tilt. I guess it was tilted at about thirty degrees when the crane arm broke off at the base and it started falling toward where I stood. I'm not sure how they stopped the engine, because I was busy leaving widely spaced footprints. But I do remember the thud when the crane arm hit the ground, and I remember walking back to where my footprints showed I had been standing. The arm came within about six feet of my foot prints. It bent into a boomarang shape and buried the end about three feet into hard packed sand. Another strange thing was that, while I was running, an elderly man passed me.
This happened about 1950, in Ft. Pierce, Florida.
After 50 years, I still avoid cranes. If I see one working on the side of the Interstate, I change lanes to stay as far away from it as possible. In cites, I cross the street or go around the block to keep from passing one.
Howard