Things that go bump

I have a new illogical fear. This one's super stupid, more so than my other random fears. In Oklahoma, I usually stay at the Embassy Suites and they have this huge atrium area with live plants. They have this one gigantic fern/palm thing that has huge single leaves that are longer than I am. It doesn't help that these gigantic leaves are on these huge stalks that reach the 4th floor. Everytime I walk past it, and I have to in order to get to the lobby, I keep imagining one of the stalks with a leaf/frond breaking off and crushing me.

It makes me nervous to think that there are places in the world, somewhere, where plants that gigantic grow naturally. It made me scared thinking that if a plant can get that big, what about other things like animals or bugs? I mean, honestly I will probably never go to the Amazon or some other super tropical locale so I don't need to worry about being crushed by gigantic falling leaves or bitten by spiders the size of a Great Dane so I really shouldn't be paranoid about this. However...that lingering thought of "God, what's really out there?" keeps running through my head.

It doesn't help that I watch River Monsters on I think the Animal Planet. It's about some British fisherman who goes around the world looking to capture a seriously, unnaturally, large fish that just shouldn't exist but it does...it does. So then that made me paranoid as well. I never liked swimming in lakes because I hate murky water (mostly because I think it's dirty, not so much of the fact that I can't see the bottom) but now I'm going to be more terrified because I'll be thinking of gigantic catfish waiting to suck me into their gross mouths. When a bunch of us went to Lake Powell in college, Kristin literally jumped out of the water into the boat because a fish brushed up against her leg. I laughed at her then...oh how right she was to be scared of fish...

And because I'm so amazingly smart, I started googling random "giant" things like squid, fish, bugs, etc. It only creeped me out more and I have no one to blame but myself and my need to be masochistic. Now I am terrified of whales and the ocean in general. Again, it's the fear of not knowing what's really out there.

Hoepfully, I think of another random thing to be afraid of because seriously, this is just ridiculous.