Cementophobia...

I have a fear of cement trucks.

No, I'm not kidding.

Yes, this is an actual fear.

More specifically, I am afraid that I will be standing behind a cement truck and someone will accidentally undo the safety and I will suddenly be covered in a metric ton of quick-drying cement which I will have accidentally both swallowed and inhaled (like when you don't know you're going to be sprayed with a high-powered water hose) a quick-drying very dense cement which will then harden in my lungs and stomach.

Clearly, I can wash off the external cement. This bothers me because I like my clothes, but it is not a perpetual fear. The fear is in the aftermath...

Will suffocation from the inside-out, a slow hardening of cement in my lungs (while creating a really cool inner-mold of my body) be incredibly painful? What if the cement shards get into my blood stream? Will I be able to feel tiny bits of sidewalk floating around in my system?

Now, let's say that I actually survive the lung part of this. I somehow miraculously cough up all of the shards and now I'm just left with the swallowed cement. I can only picture this slowly ripping up my body as I try to digest the undigestable shards of block. Yes, this does end in a very Chuck Palahniuk-style plot line that is reminiscent of, oh, ANY of his books and concluding to a bloody mess ending with the phrase "My anus is bleeding!" (thank you, Don Hertzfeldt).

I'm sure a lot of this has to do with me working at a place that is under construction and having to walk past many construction vehicles regularly. Today, for example, I was walking along the sidewalk and had to go across the driveway entrance to one of the sides of the building and had to walk underneath a...um...large thingabob. It's a truck-like thing with two large prong-like appendages hanging off the front of it on which you can pile lots of heavy stuff. My point is that I had to walk under the large pile of heavy stuff only supported by two metal prong things. Clearly I need to watch Bob the Builder a bit more because I'm not up on my construction terms.

Very long-winded story short, construction kinda scares me and I don't want a bleeding anus after having swallowed concrete. I've thought about this a lot and I would prefer death by stingray.