ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 9, 1996 TAG: 9612100019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
I wasn't surprised a whole lot when those scientists said they probably have discovered an anxiety gene.
I've had one for years. Got it from my mother who was a world-class worrier.
She worried:
That I would do time up the river some day; that the Christmas tree was going to set the house on fire; that my delicate constitution would lead me to an early grave or, at the very least, I would lose all my hair by the time I was 30.
That Social Security would fail before I had my first electronic deposit; that I would marry a gold digger or hurt myself (a) playing football or (b) working at a desk in the Army at Fort George G. Meade; that my daddy was going to fall into the tree one Christmas Eve - starting a page-one fire that would destroy us all.
(He did lunge into the tree once or twice, but we didn't have electric lights on it and it just fell over nicely and didn't ignite. We were out a few broken ornaments but that beat incineration on Christmas Eve.)
I used to tell my mother it was unlikely that I would be killed when an airliner crashed into a remote Andes peak and that the possibility of my being kidnapped for ransom seemed just as far out - since we rarely had a little more than lunch money left over at the end of the month.
And I told her I was quite sure nobody was going to put a bomb under my 1953 Ford Victoria, with a white on black body and phony red leather seats. I had been tempted to blow it up myself just to get rid of the carburetor.
And my Mama would say:
"Well, Junior, you never can tell."
I'm older and my Mama's gene is working better than ever. I worry about Social Security; although I'm fairly certain I've passed the age when a gold digger might pick me off.
I worry about my children - although none of them has flown over the Andes Range as far I know. I don't tell anybody, but I'm beginning to be afraid of the Christmas tree.
I also worry about the argument we're going to have over whether the tree is straight or leaning when we put it up.
I was down to the recycling bins recently and there were some suspicious-looking people there with too much green plastic to suit me, but they didn't attempt to abduct me.
I don't worry, however, that somebody is going to put a bomb under my Cherokee because nobody would waste a bomb on a car that old and dirty.
Not worrying worries me, though.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB