Confession: My Fear of Basements
Alana has a feature on her blog on Sundays called “Sunday Confessional” in which she confesses things about herself. I love this feature, so I’ve decided to adapt it for L’histoire de sa vie, only not necessarily on Sundays, or any reasonable schedule. Confession 1:
People who know me very well know that I am afraid of very few things. Among these things is basements, which frankly terrify me. I’m not scared of the concept of basements, which I actually think is quite cool: if done right, the basement could be a whole other floor of a house, hidden from the outside world. Pretty sweet.
No, what I’m scared of is going into basements, alone. Perhaps it’s the lack of windows, or the idea that they’re buried in the earth under the weight of a whole house, or their unfamiliarity to me (Houston, like most of the South, has no basements), but whenever I descend basement stairs, I can’t help but feel that the earth will swallow me. Because of my related fear of dying alone, this means I cannot enter basements without a companion, preferably one willing to die with me in a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-earth-swallowing freak accident.
The first basement I ever encountered was in North Carolina. I remember it being a dark and spider-filled hellhole of doom. In high school, I was often informed that I would be “sleeping in the basement,” when I traveled to the North, a thought that is almost too dreadful to even write.
I’m okay with basements of large buildings. Perhaps my trust of large civil engineering projects is stronger than that of homes, or maybe elevators make basements simply seem like “other floors,” especially when there is more than one basement. It also could be because big buildings contain many rooms, not just in the basement, without windows. In addition, the bigger the basement, the more likely I’ll be comfortable while below ground. If I can see an above-ground window, it also goes a long way to calming me, knowing that when swallowed by the ground, at least I’ll still be able to breathe. [The soil’s jurisdiction ends at window level, presumably.]
So the next time you invite me to your beautiful Northern home, don’t be shocked when I hesitate at the stairs to the basement. I’m sure your subterranean entertainment room is really cool and stocked. It’s just that I’d prefer that you go first.
Sorry about having you stay in my basement back at Post-Post-Post-Post International Convention in Chicago in 2004. In the “North,” as you might say, we use our basements as “extra space.” We don’t have guest rooms; we have basements. Though I guess some people do have guest rooms. But I don’t. So you get to stay in our basement.
Where do Southerners host guests??
We have guest rooms. I think that in Texas, we generally have larger houses because land is cheap so houses are very cheap.
My old dog, Sababa, used to be afraid of going down our stairs to the basement. We think he fell down once. Fortunately, our basement has two sets of stairs (sounds weird until you’ve seen it) so he went down those.
I guess that’s not actually like your fear, but it’s close!
Funny! I understand your trepidation, completely. I lived in a basement this summer and our window actually opened up into a three feet deep well. Baby bunnies would often jump down our window well and get trapped until I could climb out the window and rescue them.
Basements are pretty bomb in terms of temperature though.
(I’m in Hungary right now!)