For the last time - YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE EATEN BY A SHARK

Those of you who know me are likely aware that, despite having grown up on an temperate island with plenty of lakes and rivers, I am a piss-poor swimmer.  But don't blame me!  Blame my irrational fear, generated in early childhood by seeing the poster for the movie Jaws, of being attacked by a shark.  Try as they might, my Bubbling Beetle swim instructors cold not get me to float on my back, and I never told them why, because even back then I knew it was a stupid reason.  But still, deep down inside, I felt that if I turned my back to the water...that was when the shark would get me.  And before anyone asks the obvious question - yes, I was in a pool.  So what?  Sharks are SMART.  They'll find a way. 

Of course I'm hardly the only person in this world to have this irrational fear - and it's certainly not the only irrational fear that people have.  So I was smugly superior when I read this article about the six most feared but least likely causes of death.  After all, one out of six isn't bad, right?  Because I've never been scared of flying...or falling...or earthquakes...or axe murderes in my closet...or terrorists...gaaaahhh...okay, now I've got to finish my post from under my desk...

But, really, people get pretty freaked out over harmless things.  Like with mad cow disease and avian flu and people getting all freaked out about how burgers and KFC will kill them.  Which, it will, but just not in the way they think. 

But that's the difference, isn't it?  If it's our lifestyle that gets us in the end - we wind up killing ourselves.  (Aside - the best retort I ever heard to the snottily-asked question "Why do you smoke?" was "I'm suicidal, but also a procrastinator.")  If anything, we should be scared of us.  Every time I go to the pool I should be afraid, but not of sharks - of my own reflection in the water.  "Omigod!  There's the person who's eventually going to get me!  AAAAIIIIEEE!!!!"   

Anyway - I guess all I'm saying is that it's pretty funny how people, on the whole, tend to fixate on way-out-there bizzarro things that are incredibly unlikely, and ignore the things which are actually dangerous.

Not that it matters - we're all going to be killed by a giant asteroid, anyway.