There are many different types of fear that can take a hold of you. Early in your life there is a fear of your parents, or a fear of a Michael Jackson poster, or the fear that you'll get embarrassed in school. As you get older there is a fear of failure, or the fear that comes with being a parent, and the fear maybe, just maybe, you aren't quite as smart as you thought you were. Or last night, while I watched this special on Minnie Riperton, I had this fear that I would die before I got a chance to accomplish everything on my "list"..which brings me to this morning's fear.

This morning as I prepared to go out for my 30-35 minute jog, both my lady and I thought we heard thunder, but when I looked outside it didn't look like rain. And in the summer months, you frequently hear thunder, but that's all it amounts to. Normally, I would turn on the Weather Channel to get an up-to-the-minute update, but it was 5:45am, and I was barely awake enough to run, let alone analyze a weather report. I threw on my shorts, my shoes and a shirt and I went outside to assess the the situation. On one side of the sky, the sun was out and I saw blue skies. On the other side of the sky, I saw dark clouds and I heard thunder in the distance. My meteorological instincts kicked in at the point, and I thought I had some time before any substantial downpour came. After all, usually when you have a split sky situation (rain on one side, sun on the other) you'll either have a brief downpour or nothing at all. I was wrong.

Just 8 minutes (or one IPOD song) into my run, not only did the rain come in buckets, but the lightning picked up, the thunder was louder, and I was terrified. I was only 8 minutes away from my house, but it felt like 8 miles. The lightning seemed like it was right in front of my face, the rain was causing flooding all around me, and the thunder was setting off car alarms left and right. At first I kept running towards home, but when some lightning got a little too close for comfort, I ran to shelter outside of a building. I wait about 5 minutes, and the rain didn't even come close to subsiding, and lightning and thunder was still come in full force. I didn't see ANYONE else running or walking on the sidewalk, just cars and trucks zooming by with their windshield wipers frantically going back and forth. After about 5-10 more minutes, I just said f**k it, and I ran full speed back to the apt. A couple times it felt like I was just missing getting his by lightning, but there was no way in hell I was going to stop running. I finally got to my apt, took my key out, stepped in the building, immediately thanked God, and got out of the wet clothes.

This may sound trivial or funny to you, and in due time I'm sure I'll laugh at my dumb ass decision, but that 15 minute experience had me scared as hell. I think I'll just go swimming the rest of the week.