[QUOTE="MrGeezer"]I was afraid of going over bridges.
As a matter of fact, I am STILL afraid of going over bridges. To this day, every time I drive over a particularly long or high bridge, I have to try really hard not to crap my pants, pull over to the side of the road, and then cower in the fetal position until the cops come and take me away.
cowboymonkey21
I was too afraid of bridges and like you still am, though not nearly as much.I think that it partly has to do with my fear of heights, and partly to do with my fear of drowning in the sea. Bridges are one of the few things that cobines these fears. Drive over a long bridge, and you're scared because you're basically out in the middle of the sea. And if that bridge also happens to be HIGH, now you're not ONLY out in the middle of the sea, but you're also more than 200 feet above anything denser than air. So you either picture yourself drowning in your car, or falling and getting smashed to pieces like that one Mythbusters episode about falling off of high bridges, or you picture yourself surviving the fall and getting horribly injured, and THEN drowning.
Now, one would think that thick fog would help with this fear. Because it obscures the ends of the bridge so that you can't really see how far out in the middle of the sea that you are. Or it is thick enough that you can't see the ground/sea, and you can't see just how high you are. But somehow that's even worse. Because now you're not imagining yourself falling for 200 feet before having the force of impact rip your arms off. You're not imagining falling into the sea and having to swim for a couple of miles before you reach shore. Now you're imagining yourself falling FOREVER. Now you're imagining that you don't get the hell off of that bridge, but that you will keep driving and that the brdige will NEVER end. And that eventually you'll come to the realization that you are dead, and are in Hell, and you have been condemned to drive along an endless bridge for the rest of eternity. Or fall off of an infinitely high bridge and keep falling into an infinitely deep abyss for the rest of eternity. Or more likely, never falling or drowning, but just forever driving, hoping to see the bridge and the fog come to an end. But it will never end, because you're in Hell. And what scares you is the thought of POSSIBILITIES, rather than actually seeing those possibilities become reality. More likely, the fog just never ends. You just keep on driving forever, constantly and eternally living out the one (actually two) thing that scares you the most.
THAT is what it is like to drive onto a bridge in deep heavy fog. It is like deciding to drive right into Hell. Because once you reach the highest point, and are sufficiently far from either end of the bridge, you are merely in a void which exaggerates your worst fears of being on the bridge in the first place. Suddenly it becomes an endless void. There is no land, shore, or sea, there's only you on the bridge. And once you're on it, there's no guarantee that you will EVER get off of it. Once you're on it, you might have actually BEEN on it for a zillion years. You might actually BE in Hell, and your memory of only having driven onto the bridge a few minutes ago may have only been a FALSE memory put there by Satan himself to keep you from getting too comfortable with the the reality of driving over a bridge for the rest of eternity. Any direction you look, there's only a thick fog which you cannot peer into. You are in the middle of a void which very well may be endless. And if that void DOES happen to be endless, you will be spending the rest of ETERNITY doing the absolute one thing which scares you the most.
Also the oompa loompas, muppets, or things like that.
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