Damn.

The W.Va mining travesty is absolutely horrible, and in light of a previous fluffy blog I want to add something to my list of fears-

Buried Alive. Horrible. Can't stand the thought. It has supplanted my unnatural fear of being eaten by a great white shark (Which, btw, a friend of mine told me "Would actually be a pretty cool death". Okay. I can dig it.)

During the H'weenie season, the G and G tourguides get to tell 2 really narsty stories regarding live burial/trapped and buried alive, one of which is a natural mining disaster. (Which, if you want to hear them, you'll need to go on the tours. Annnnd, coughcough, the guides would loooooove to tell the Milford Mining story at the Wolf Caves again...I'mjustsayin'. ; ) These are my two favorite stories to tell, and I can sell'em pretty well- but only because of that fear.

I think it originally came to fruition during my childhood. Living in a cul-de-sac, the snow-plows would always push the biggest mound in front of my parents house. It made for perfect "fort building", but there were two times while tunnelling that the sumbitching thing caved in on me, and I had to get pulled out by the heels of my moon boots.

When I was 13 and in the 'Scouts, one of our camping trips was to Eagle Cave out in 'Sconnie. A fantastic time and one of my favorite trips- In the dead of winter, camping in a cave which held the balmy temperature of 52 degrees F. We'd climb around and down and down. Deeper. There were bats, and drips, a stalactites and stalagmites. Chambered rooms where you couldn't touch the ceiling lest it fall.

And even though I had a malleable 13 year olds body (read: Rubenesque), me and the old moobs managed to get wedged in real good while exploring. Facing down. With no room for purchase. Yeah. That fear was pretty immediate, and I remember getting a pretty good scratch around my tummy from freaking out and trying to pull my body out. (Funny that, our Australian scoutmaster told me it kinda looked like a shark bite. So I guess I've already survived that one and no longer need the fear.)

Oddly enough, that same year the Voodoo/Tetratodoxin movie "The Serpent and the Rainbow" came out with that deliciously creepy tag line "Don't let them bury me...I'm not dead!". Yeah. I don't know which gave me worse nightmares: The thought of being drugged up on dried up blowfish and buried alive, or Bill Pullman's over-the-toppedness.

So yeah. There's my fear. My heart goes out to their families during this awful time.