25 things that terrify us all, but will probably never happen.

You know what’s a little bit scary?

Trains. I’m not talking about the fact they go really fast and can kill people at crossings and all the genuinely scary parts of trains. I’m talking about the moment you get off them. When, for one terrifying second, it’s possible you might drop your phone down the tiny gap between the train and the platform.

Now THAT is terrifying.

This one-second-fear of my morning routine is often followed by another. I leave the platform and go to the escalator. My heart rate is normal, normal, normal, until the one second when I have to step off. And for that one second, my heart beats fast, as I unreasonably fear getting stuck in the teeth at the bottom of the escalator.

Yet I never have.

I mentioned these silly everyday fears to some of the Mamamia staff, and what followed? A barrage of unfounded fears, probably based on scary/embarrassing moments in ridiculous movies, that never actually eventuate in real life. And as each one was revealed, I realised more and more everyday fears that I never knew I always had.

25 things that we are afraid of daily (that will probably never happen).

1. “Every time I go to yoga I am terrified I will fart… Even though I have never farted in a yoga class.”
2. “That I’ll somehow get caught in the end of an escalator and chewed up and killed.”
3. “That I will drop my phone between the train and platform.”
   Hold it. Hoooooold it. Original photo source: Flickr/Eli Christman
4. “Someone will peek under the door of my toilet cubicle.”
5. “Leaving the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to my shoe.”
6. “Getting stuck in the turnstile gates at the train station. Like, stuck.”
7. “My brakes failing while I’m driving up/down a hill. Does that even happen outside of movies?”
8. “A spider will be hiding under the toilet seat or behind the visor in the car.”
9. “If I try to stop the door of the lift closing, my arm will get chopped off.”
10. “That I’m too close to the kerb and the bus will hit me, then when I’m unconscious I’ll be robbed.”
11. “That a rat will appear in the toilet when I flush it. I blame a plumbing TV ad from my childhood in which this actually happened.”
12. “I will trip down the escalator and lose all my teeth.”
13. “Every time I get in a spa, I am scared my hair is going to get sucked into the drain and I’ll drown.”
14. “That I will fall through a manhole on the street and into a basement or sewer.”
    Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. Source: Flicker/Greg L
15. “I always feel that I have left my iron on and my cat will need to extinguish the fire.”
16. “Every time I smell petrol when I am in the car, I am scared my car is going to explode.”
17. “That I’ll step on a grate and it will cave in and my leg will get stuck.”
18. “At events, I worry that I will trip and spill something on someone important.”
19. “That I’ll get sucked down a drain when it’s raining heavily (I don’t even know how that’s possible, but they always warn people about stormwater drains and now I’ve been brainwashed).”
20. “That if my mobile rings at a petrol station I will singlehandedly blow it up.”
21. “On long haul flights I get very nervous when people hang out near the emergency exit door at the back. I constantly have visions of them accidentally opening it and killing us all.”
    So many fears.
22. “Even if I know I’ve done nothing wrong, I almost expect to set off the sensors/beepy things when I leave a shop.”
23. “Stairs stress me out. I have a habit of falling down them.”
24. “I have to lift off my duvet every night before I go to bed because I’m terrified a cockroach or spider will have made a home in there.”
25. “If I look in a mirror when I’m home alone, a person will appear over my shoulder.”

So I don’t know about you, but now I’m terrified. I need a valium. And a bodyguard.