I don’t have a lot of fears, other than a crippling sense of getting older, talking to other people, social anxiety and never living up to my really low ceiling of potential. I’m not afraid of the dark, or heights, or spiders or snakes like everyone else. So maybe I do have one irrational fear.

I probably got in trouble a lot when I was young, because this dude(me) hates being put in the corner. Especially when I was a baby. In other words, this baby does not like to be put in the corner.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m American and we enjoy wide open spaces, and a large amount of personal space, but I’ve always been claustraphobic. I never enjoyed all those times I was put in the trunk, locked in the closet, or shoved inside one of those slides with the tubes at the top. Always a fan of wide open births.

One time, I decided to go see a doctor. Big mistake for many reasons. I don’t know if you know this, but most doctors are pretty useless. Except surgeons that actually take bad stuff out of you, the mostly tell you what you already knew and tell you to take some aspirin. Thanks for making my insurance pay you all the money to tell me that. Also, here is my $20 stupid fee for thinking that a doctor would tell me something I didn’t know.

Anyways, this one doctor told me that I was supposed to go get one of those MRI thingys done. Awesome, so it’s just a five minute thing in a nice large tube right?

Yeah, it will be a nice large tube. If you are a tiny fish or baby. But if you are 6’1 and 250 lbs. it will be like being wrapped in a really tight blanket. But the blanket will be made of hard plastic. Yeah, and it will be only 5 minutes, plus another hour and 10 minutes on top of that 5 minutes.

Oh, well if that is all.

I love being shoved into nice cramped spaces…for an hour and 15 minutes. You can at least bring your phone inside right? Why no electronic devices? Well at least a book right? Oh, my gosh, what am I supposed to do with all my fear of tight spaces while I’m in here? Oh just focus that for an hour and a half? Sounds swell.

So, basically, this was my spiders crawling all over me, snakes wrapping me up, being on top of the Empire State building without a parachute, all the stars turned off kind of situation. I actually would have preferred being wrapped up by a deadly python for and hour and a half than this garbage. I tried to sleep, and tried to die, but none of those things works. So I just focused on the louds sounds of X-rays pulsing through my veins that would probably kill me as soon as I got out.

Some people wonder why I’ve never wanted to live in NYC or go to a crowded party or concert before. Yeah, I wonder why sometimes too.

ARRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHH

Bitter Claustrophobiac Ben