Blog Assignment Due September 13:
Describe a fear.  Make the reader feel it.

Amusement parks are not my idea of a good time.  When I do find myself in one, I know there are particular rides that I will not be on.  Anything that puts me on a skinny rail, in a car from which I can easily plummet, takes me 2 miles in the air and the gleefully hurtles me to the ground, otherwise known as roller coasters, will not be on my to-do list that day.

I am always adamant that I WILL NOT ride a roller coaster, and just as often I find myself talked into going, just one time.  My interior monologue goes like this:  "This is a perfectly safe ride.  It is inspected.  It has never lost anyone.  I will be fine.  I should be adventuresome, brave and do this."

Then, when I'm on the roller coaster, secured in my seat, and it gives a lurch forward to begin, my interior monologue goes like this:  "Are you crazy?  Why did I think I should be adventuresome?  It's way over-rated!  There is no merit in being dead.  I will be dead by the end of this ride either because this monster will have its first collapse in history or I will die of a heart attack!"

And so it creeps out of the station and begins the painfully slow ascent to the top.  Is my stomach lurching?  I don't think I have a stomach at this point.  Is my heart racing?  Not sure I have one of those either.  Basically, I'm brain dead.  And we haven't even reached the top of the hill!

Of course when I see the first cars begin to drop over the edge, I'm not coherent, I can no longer breathe, I cannot even scream.  Even now as I write this in the safe environment of my home with no roller coaster in sight, my stomach is cringing, my heart is pounding as I imagine that terrifying moment when I free fall to the bottom.  Just as quickly, I'm being yanked back to the top of another hill and dropped again.  Of course there are the requisite loops and twists and spirals in which I become completely disoriented.  These are intermittently scattered throughout so that I have no sense if I'm falling or spinning.  The wind is rushing by my head, my eyes are squeezed shut and I can only moan.

We roll to a final stop.  Around me there are excited voices about how absolutely awesome the ride was.  I can only babble, "Don't make me do that again!"