09/10/1999

Dream: Kill the Wolf-Cat

-the wolf is actually a long beige cat
-it runs up from the basement of my house with grandma and I chasing it
-she follows it into the backyard, but I stop and peek through the screen door. I don’t see the cat-wolf. I open the door and it creeps out of the closet
-I kick the wolf-cat in the ribs and it bites my foot, but at least it’s outside
-Leslie keeps letting the wolf-cat in the front door
-I keep yelling at her because it takes a long time to get rid of it and then she just invites it back in again
-I get the wolf-cat out and into the backyard, looking for some way to trap it, and notice the barbeque. I draw the wolf’s attention to it, then, when it’s on the barbeque, close the lid
-now I don’t have to worry about the wolf-cat anymore

Hey, I just figured out the psychology behind my strangest childhood fear: the fear of the… TELEPHONE!

Although I do still get nervous phoning certain people, I have pretty much conquered my fear. For years, this has puzzled me, but now, as I reflect upon it, this fear is starting to make sense. You see, when I was a child, every time the doorbell rang, my mother would answer if she was home, but my father would hide in the nearest bathroom.

When my mother wasn’t home, we were all instructed to hide wherever we happened to be; that meant, drop to the ground and pretend nobody’s home. Dad would always say, in his best slurred English, “Oh, it’s just salespeople, and they won’t ever leave you alone.”

When the phone rang, the story was the same: Dad would walk right into the bathroom without missing a beat! He never offered an explanation for this action; he didn’t owe us anything of that nature.

Wow! What a powerful force that phone must be if it can scare my daddy so!

I didn’t realize then that my father spent his existence in fear. I’m not sure if I even realised, at that point, that it was not the phone itself, but the people on the other end, that worried him.

This all makes sense, now. Now I understand why I’ve always been so cautious around the phone; perhaps I figured I would be inflicting a similar fear on the household I was trying to contact, and that’s not something I would wish upon anyone.