Fears...

Have you ever been consumed by your fears before? Have you ever been kept awake the entire night by your fears? Nope, I'm not writing a scary story, but I just wanna share with you one of my secrets that haunted me last night.

Beware: this might seem really silly to some.

To be frank, I've always been afraid of death, because I'm afraid of the unknown. I dunno what will happen to me when I die. I fear for what it is to come, and how would my friends and family feel? It all started when I saw a scene in one of the channel 8 shows where Ivy Lee was in a coffin. I reckon I made the connection of death with myself because she's a young person, but she died. From then on, I'm always haunted by the fear of the unknown after life.

But what I'm about to share is something that really happened to me before. It's one of my secrets in life too. And because of this, I couldn't sleep last night.

Time goes back to my primary school days. My parents are working adults and I'm often left at home with my elder brothers. This day, I was asked to go pack lunch back. When I returned with the food, I got onto the lift with another guy probably in his 30s. As I came out of the lift, this guy approached me and asked if I could bring him to a particular unit number. Coincidentally, that's the unit number of one of my brother's friend. So I thought I was being helpful, and brought this guy to the flat. On the way there, he introduced himself as a dentist from the school and he needed to find the student due to some dental problems. And when we finally got to the place, he told me that was not the place he was looking for even though the unit number is correct. So he asked me to walk around the block with him to help locate the student.

Then we went another part of the block, down a really dark staircase, suddenly he told me that he wanted to stop the search. He said since he couldn't find the student, and being a dentist, he wanted to examine me. He first told me that he needed to check my BCG, then he told me that he wanted to check my mouth. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid. I told him my brother was waiting for me. Upon hearing that, he let me go.

I ran home and told my brother about it. He was furious and ran downstairs to find this guy. He didn't find the guy.

It may seemed like a pretty harmless incident, but it's just plain scary to me now that I'm older and can think of all the possible scary outcomes that could have happened. I mean, he was much bigger and stronger, I don't think I stand a chance if there was a struggle. And god knows what he might have put into my mouth if I really opened it for his "examination". And it puzzled me till now why he let me go. That place was quiet, dark and I was just a feeble kid. He could have done anything. My only guess is that he got startled when he heard me mention my brother.

That kept me awake last night. The possibilties of what he could have done were just running in my mind. Scary...

So it's really important that kids know how to react in situations like this. I mean, in real situations, it doesn't matter what you learnt in school. Your mind would go blank. You'll never be able to perform a perfect CME action.

For that I'm never gonna let my child out of my sight before he/she hits 15! Make that 25!

I'll share another scary encounter with a pervert/stalker another time.