I wouldn't say "afraid" but holes give me the willies. Like some ugly suspended ceilings...with that uneven pattern of holes. Things like that. shudder.

I don't know why.

Spiders. Very irrational.

Other than that, I'm pretty fearless. I don't have enough sense to be afraid of much in the physical world...the powers of the human mind can give me pause, though.

Those metal grates in the sidewalk. Actually, I'm not afraid of them, but my wife hates them and will detour around them. She's subconsciously trained me over the years to avoid them when walking with her, and now when I'm by myself, I avoid them too, out of habit.

Once, a couple years ago, I was walking down the sidewalk alone and changed my path to avoid a grate. This guy walking in the other direction saw me do it and started laughing at me. Said real in a real loud mocking tone "Oh no! A metal grate!" I hadn't even noticed that I did it, and had to laugh at myself. I mean, wtf? What else do I do without realizing it?

Pick your nose.

Quit it glatt!

:lol:

:D

I fear the hard hot center of the Earth - and that nothing stands between it and us but this thin shell, this fine flaky crust, this fragile, shattered plate whose bits float and bump on a sea of molten rock.

I fear being alone. I am always only one person away from disaster.

I also fear "the dark" -- not what may be hiding in the dark, the dark itself, like the Nothing in The Neverending Story. This formless, black shifting mass will smother me to death.

Apparently, the 90% of the universe that is dark matter has been hiding in my closet all this time! :haha:

funny. my wife is the same way. She will not under any circumstances walk over grates, manhole covers, or the like. Both of my kids love to jump up and down on them. it's pretty funny watching her go into seizures.

I'm another one of those people with an inexplicable aversion to metal grates in the ground.

I wouldn't say I am afraid of ants, but I am definitely disgusted by them. I try my best to rescue most creatures that end up in our apartment, but ants trigger a "Destroyer of Worlds" mode that I have yet to find reason for.

My oddest fear is that someone will break in and murder me while I am showering. I imagine myself defenseless with nowhere to escape, and completely surprised since the sound of the shower would have masked the robber's entry. A few weeks ago, I thought I heard someone trying to break in. Dripping wet, I grabbed a towel and sidled up to the front door, then flung it open ready to kill whatever was on the other side. All I found was a flyer for the new Chinese place down the street. The racket had been the poor advertiser fighting our weather stripping to get the flyer tucked into the door.

Wow, there are a lot of you afraid of grates?

Do many of you also fear heights? Just wondering if there is a relation?

I'm not afraid of heights -- I'm afraid of falling.

ETA: which I guess does relate back to the fear of metal grates

To be fair, grates can be a little slippery when it's been raining, and they often ice up first when there is freezing rain. So I don't like them when it's wet out. You are liable to wipe out. Otherwise, they are actually pretty cool. You can imagine you are walking on air.

walking on the large grates always takes me back to my childhood when my cousins and i would pretend the large series of grates near the house were the deck of a star wars spaceship.

my super-awesome nerd rays are blinding you aren't they?

My father in law was a chemical engineer before he retired, and once when we were visiting him, he took us on a tour of his plant. It was pretty impressive. Halfway through it, when we were up on this second floor catwalk thing, I looked over at my wife, and she was making a strange face and pointing down. I couldn't figure out what she was pointing at. I looked through the grate we were standing on at the concrete floor about 60 feet below, but there was nothing there. "What?" I asked, and she hissed "the grate!" and it wasn't until then that I realized we had been walking all over on the grates and remembered how much she hated grates. She earned big points with me that day for putting her fear aside so she wouldn't disappoint her dad as he showed off his plant. Plus, it was kind of funny after that as we kept climbing higher up around these enormous vats.

A spaceship? That would work, but I'd think of the Bespin carbon-freezing facility first for grates.

I fear personal contact with other people.

Aha! An IT type! :lol: