For many, college is a life altering experience. Sometime during my freshman year of college, my consumption of ethanol attacked the “fear center” of my brain. My duty as a freshman involved the weekly intake of enough alcohol to fuel a 747 Boeing full of obese people around the earth about 3 times. Ignoring my very unfortunate allergy to hops (one of the main ingredients of beer and malt liquor), I still gave drinking beer the old college try. While this was fun for the first 7 minutes, the violent rejection of the sweet stouts and pilsners forced me to move onto other avenues. I instead focused my attention on the hard stuff. Like a good student, I was a quick learner and was able to imbibe a liter of hard liquor a night with ease by the second semester. One eventful night, however, the 2 bottles of Barton’s $7.99 bottle of vodka left its mark. As I lay dying on the floor of an all male dorm’s public restroom, the alcohol in my bloodstream viciously ravaged the fear center of my brain like a passed out, 17 year old, high school cheerleader at a frat party. I did not die, however. The recovery took 3 full days, and then things seemed to once again be back to normal. Or, so I thought.
Before I can explain the after effects of this, one must first understand what this “fear center” does. The fear center is responsible for things such as the fear of blunt force trauma to the genitals, Brokeback Mountain, Barbara Streisand, shopping, and interior decorators. The fear center is quite different in males than it is in females, which would explain the reason that spiders, massive quantities of blood, high elevations, and metal things are cool to us and not to women. A correctly functioning fear center induces extreme sports and the desire to kick the shit out of Richard Simmons. That being said, I will return to my story.
The next morning was like any other morning aside from the blood I vomited on myself during the night. I was sicker than I have ever been before yet it seemed like life would continue. Within a few days, it was apparent that things were not at all okay. I began to realize that certain things scared the shit out of me that had never bothered me before. These fears are not your conventional phobias…no agoraphobia or Gallophobia here. Instead, I began to have this concern that bears would attack me in my sleep. Yes, thats right, bears.
I am not afraid of bears. Growing up in Upstate NY, I saw lots of bears. Black bears in NY stay relatively small and have never attacked any human in the area to this day. They are easily spooked, and won’t sniff around campsites if there are people nearby. Unlike those crazy tame Yellowstone Park bears, wild bears don’t give a fuck about people and definitely would not go out of their way to attack somebody, especially while they were sleeping. Yet, I had to move my bed against the wall so I could keep an eye on the door.
Animals in general don’t bother me. I dislike dogs due to the fact that they enjoy rolling in shit and dead animals, then enjoy sharing it with you. It’s no secret that I don’t like snakes. To be completely honest, snakes scare the shit out of me. I scream like a sissy girl when I see one; it’s not something I can control. I attribute this to the fact that my mother did lots of drugs while I was in utero. While my inhuman tolerance of Novocain and other painkillers is kind of cool, being scared fucking shitless of snakes kind of sucks. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as the majority of Americans also have Ophidiophobia or some form of dislike for snakes (approx. 165,000,000 Americans). Studies have shown that this is a hereditary trait passed on by human evolution…whatever. I don’t like them, and more than half of you reading this probably don’t like them either. With bears it was different. I keep a 12” Ka Bar and “Mr. Hickory Beatdown” (the loving name I have given my troll crushing axe handle) by my bed at all times. Unfortunately the state of NY does not deem me mentally sound enough to own a pistol, or I would have a couple of those by the bed too. If a bear does attack me, I’m at least going to fuck up his day a bit before he eats my face.
The next fear hit me quite unexpectedly. A favorite drink of my pre-college days was various flavored Sobe beverages. I liked almost all of them….the green tea one, the orange-pineapple-guava-mango-starfruit-citrus-y one, the cranberry-apple one, even that weird blue colored one with the shit floating towards the bottom of it were all good. Little did I know that they were actually filled with……GASOLINE!!! Okay…so I know they are not filled with gasoline. I just can’t buy them anymore due to the fear that instead of the sugary goodness contained within, the Sobe bottle will be brimming with 87 Octane petrol.
I have never received a bottle of Sobe with gasoline in it, but complex experiments conducted by myself prove that Sobe bottles are fully capable of holding gasoline. A disgruntled employee could replace a bottle (or several thousand bottles…depending on his level of disgruntledness (Wee. I made up a word)) filled with gasoline instead of Sobe beverage. It’s only too obvious of an evil trick to play on the thirsty consumers. I, for one, am not playing into that kind of abuse from assembly line workers gone bat shit insane. You had better get your act together Sobe, and start treating your associates better.
