Gephyrophobia

When I was a kid, I remember my father picking me up for weekend (or it could've been a weekday; I dunno) visitation, one time in-particular. While driving across a bridge, he noticed that I'd tensed up. He asked me why and I told him, "I'm kinda afraid of bridges."

He asked why, again, and I struggled to find the will and the words to express my fear that the bridge could collapse or something. His response to his seven- or eight-year-old first-born son's fear was basically to say, "That's stupid."

I felt pretty stupid, too, but I was still afraid of bridges.

Now, it's many, many years later and I've largely conquered this, gephyrophobia, an offshoot of my fear of heights (acrophobia). I still have my moments of knuckling the hell out of the steering wheel as I cross a large body of water, especially, but it's certainly manageable.

I've got other family members, though, who don't $^&* with bridges - period (almost). They drive the long way around or whatever it takes to avoid'em. In some cases, that means they don't get to leave town all that often - either because someone they really trust has to be driving for them to come NEAR a bridge.

I think that's going overboard and I'd really like to see these adults conquer their fears - to some degree, at least. (But I'm biased since I drove a bunch of hours to pick up family members and take them out-of-town, simply because no one in town was available and/or WILLING to cross the I-10 bridge!)

I try to stop short of thinking that they're "stupid," though. After all, I'm sure recent stories of collapsing bridges (in Minnesota, California, and elsewhere) just cement their decades-long phobias.