Fear, Part One. One way of treating certain cancers is by “planting” a device which emits medicine.  Think of it as a clicking machine buried deep in your being.  A masterpiece out of which beams rays that change the way your cells work.

This is the way fear works.  Fear changes your cells. . . Fear changes your muscles and your organs and YOUR BEHAVIOR.  Which is how I ended up sucking back hideous iced coffee when I could have been enjoying a frosty Coke.  This happened in the sixth grade  and as far as I can tell, it’s been downhill ever since. 

(Keep in mind, if mysteryshrink is just too tainted, and you need the illusion of a psychologist with an unblemished background, there’s always Dr. L on the radio.  Though she’s not a psychologist.  She a “moral advisor” who hasn’t and doesn’t make mistakes.) 

In the middle of my sixth grade year, my family moved.  That summer, I returned to old small town to meet up with my thirteen year old buddies.  We went to a movie then swung by the drugstoreand settled into a booth like we had “back in the day.”  Before I had a chance to figure out what was happening, my friends had all ordered ”coffee” without a flinch. 

Well, I didn’t drink coffee and it had never crossed my mind that I WAS SO BEHIND MY FRIENDS.  I panicked.  My “loser-hood” was about to become obvious since I hadn’t considered myself cool enough to order coffee and just the thought of the hot steaming beverage scared me.  (Don’t forget, there’s always Dr. L.)  I had to recover quickly, so I said the first sophisticated thing that came to my head.  “I’ll have iced coffee,” I said, with a slight tilt of my chin hinting that “iced” coffee was what my super-cool crowd   in the big city were into.

And, in order to avoid criticism, I sipped up every bitter molecule of that awful drink that only grew more disgusting with the half cup of sugar I dumped into it.

So, that’s what fear of criticism can do.  Maybe I learned something about how my EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM can take charge of my life. Maybe my honesty (read: willingness to reveal total weinniness) gives the rest of you guys some ideas. 

Or at least, we can pair that bitter iced coffee afternoon with what I heard a coach say about a recent loss.

“We’ll take it and use it.  The boys made some bad choices this afternoon.  We’ll do better.  Good choices come from Experience. Experience comes from bad choices.”