Oops!! I did it again

I like to think of myself as absent minded or eccentric or sometimes even a borderline genius – no I’m not egoistic, it’s so I can understand how the things that happen to me happen to me. This morning I spent 20 minutes trying to find my house keys. Normal people get locked out of their homes. This is the second time that I had managed to lock myself in. I’ve been setting my alarm for half 6 so that I can get the bus to work at 7.30 thus arriving well in time for my 9.00 start. So far, I’ve never actually woken up at that time, I tend to snooze till 7.30 and leave about 45 minutes to get ready.

Invariably at 8.15 I am in a rush to leave as there’s a fine line between arriving at 9.00 or 9.15 and invariably I spend 5 minutes or so looking for something. Yesterday morning it was my travel card, Monday it was my ID card. I usually try to circumvent my natural carelessness by putting things in specific locations. For example, my travel card goes in my left coat pocket with my keys, my phone in the right pocket, my ID card on my neck or in the side pocket of my handbag. Obviously I haven’t been following this ethos recently hence the morning searches.

To cut the story short, I eventually found the damn thing under my newspaper because I had dropped the newspaper and bags by the sofa once I got home. I was in a rush to eat because I was starving. The funniest thing was that I saw the paper as I was getting ready to leave and thought “I am too much in a rush to put that in the recycling bag”. If only I’d known that I would get to work half an hour late, I would have picked the damn thing up!

Klutz-like things I’ve done recently:

·         Forgot my laptops in a taxi – fortunately got them back because the receptionist had seen the company number on the taxi

·         Forgot my suitcase on a train – after much worry that they would destroy it I eventually tracked it down at the station the train terminated at.

·         Left my mobile phone on a train – fortunately I remembered right after the train left and advised the station manager about my seat number and phone details

·         Walked to the station with my dress in my tights – the horror! Fortunately I had on a long coat that day so my blushes were spared

·         Forgot what my colleague looked like and introduced myself to the new woman standing by my desk. In my defence I had only met her a few times and she changed her hair.

·         A family friend/general acquaintance introduces herself to me. I launch into a long spiel about how I know her and had seen her mother and sister recently. She replies “Nope, that’s not me. You’re confusing me with Ada”

·         Called my friend excitedly to wish her happy birthday – I was excited because I am notoriously bad at remembering birthdays. She was delighted I’d called but reminded me that her birthday had actually been 5 days prior.

·         Went shopping with my friend. We happened to walk past a display of pills that were advertised as helping to flatten the stomach. I turn to my friend and say “what sort of idiot would believe this nonsense?” to which she responded “erm...that’s what I came to purchase”. Talk about foot-in-mouth disease.

·         Missed my flight home from the US – I had a departure time in my head and despite walking around with my ticket in my bag for 5 weeks and even being told by my brother that he couldn’t check me in for a flight at the time I specified (I responded there must be something wrong with the website and I’d check in when I got there, I turned up 2 hours after my flight had left.

·         Turned up 12 hours early for my flight to India – I read the arrival time as the departure time

·         Spent 15 minutes searching for my glasses until my friend asked me what I was looking for and pointed out that it was on my face – I still can’t explain this one

It’s always funny after the fact and now I’ve written them down I think I’m a pretty lucky girl.

I am afraid of...

Rats, mice, rodents: I recently went to India and was privileged to be invited to the University of Punjab – India’s top research university. As part of the tour I was taken to the “animal home” where all the animals used for testing are kept. I saw a few cute monkeys and suddenly we were in a room with a million albino mice. I felt physically ill. I was absolutely horrified when I was asked to touch one. So yeah, I’m the girl who jumps on a chair screaming at the first sight of a rat/mouse. I once watched an episode of I’m a celebrity, get me out of here where one of the contestants had to be lowered into a box or something and thousands of rats were let into the confined space. I almost died. I totally had to switch channels.

Failure:  This is a big one for me. I do not like failing. I know that people say that you cannot win if you do not try and that it is better to fail than to fail to try. I don’t buy any of that! I feel wretched when I know that I made an effort at something and then failed to achieve it.

Height: This has got worse as I’ve grown older. I remember climbing everything as a kid but I don’t do as much anymore. I’m fine inside tall buildings or with heights where I’m protected. I think that my fear of heights is only linked to a fear of death. So if I feel like there is no way I can fall off, I’m fine. If the railings/guard is not up to half my height then I believe I could fall off, I don’t stand on unprotected ledges and I was very much against climbing the near vertical steps in Wat Arun on a recent visit to Bangkok.

Death: This is probably my top fear because it directly affects all my other fears except failure. I didn’t learn to do a back flip because I was convinced I’d die from a broken neck. I started being afraid of rats because my primary school teacher told me they cause cancer. I don’t go to hospitals if I can help it because I don’t want to hear “terminal”. I lost interest in sky-diving because there was one week in 2003/2004 when 4 people died doing it. I know I shouldn’t be so silly but I really can’t help it.

Financial dependence: I cannot bear the thought of not being financially self-sufficient. I got my first job at about 16 - almost unheard of at the time for Nigeria (only people who need to work at that age typically) - because I always hated asking for an allowance. I am not rich and I am very simple. I live in a decent area of London, I go out a few times a week, I travel a few times a year and I’m happy that way. The thought of being unable (for any reason) to maintain the status quo by myself frightens the heck out of me. I think perhaps it's a way of ceding control but I can't say I fear a lack of control because I'm fine with that IF AND ONLY IF it's on my own terms.

Snakes: This is part fear, part intense disgust. Snakes can kill you, so of course that makes me afraid of them but I also can’t stand the way they slither (same goes for worms, centipedes and other creepy crawlies) I remember once I found skin that had been shed by a python in the backyard of my late grandmother’s house. I refused to go to outside unaccompanied for the rest of that trip. I’m always baffled that people that want to hold snakes or even visit them at the zoo. Crazy! As for my ill-advised viewing of Snakes on a Plane, let’s just say that I saw about 25% of the movie. I had my head in my hands for most of it.

What are you afraid of?