Jad Abumrad:

Number one. Comedians. I'm afraid of comedians.

Number two. That people will realize I'm a fraud.

Number three. Underwater Wiffle balls. I used to have this dream, this recurring dream, that I’d be kind of like treading water, and then I would submerge my head, and underneath me was, like, this giant Wiffle ball the size of like a small moon. It’s not doing anything. It's just sitting there. But just the presence of this thing submerged that I can't see and suddenly it's there, I don't know what the… I don't know why that's so scary to me. But it’s like, ugh.

Number four. That things only go in circles.

Number five. That I'll miss it.

Number six. That no one cares. No one cares how much work goes into the generating of thoughts and knowledge, you know what I mean? I don't care as a consumer, too. So I, it's like, the fear is actually just the recognition that, like, yeah, no one cares.

Number seven. That something will happen to my kids.

Number eight. Fast thinkers. It's terrifying. Fast thinkers, they're just like thieves. They steal the time away from you. I’m just, and I’m just like trying to spit out the words but the words aren't coming fast enough and they're not coming out right. Give me like ten minutes, I’m gonna compose a thought that's going to just be like a torpedo and just explode your argument. But I don't have the time. You know what I mean? 

Number nine. That I've lost my parents past. There's something, like now that I'm a dad, I feel the absence more profoundly because I have nothing to give my kids of my Arab heritage. I mean, I speak the language. I grew up speaking it, but I don't really have anyone to speak it to and so it feels weird to want to make them speak it because what's that going to do for them? You know what I mean? The fear that you won't be able to, like, continue. The continuity breaks. That's a fear.

And number 10. That my kids won't be happy. That they'll be bullied. My oldest kid, he reminds me a lot of myself. I mean, he reminds me almost exactly of myself at that age. Really, like just like the... I see a look in his eyes which I remember. Everything was going too fast. Everybody was talking too fast. Everybody was moving too fast. I just felt slow, like I had a lot of years before I felt like the rhythm of me caught up to the rhythm of life, or the pace I should say, the meter, and I sometimes catch a look from my nine-year-old and and I see that too, and I get scared for him in those moments. I get scared for him. You know? Yeah, I don’t know. There's a camp that’s, like, literally two blocks away and we just decided okay, I think our nine year old can walk home by himself. And so, like, I walked two blocks away so he couldn't see me and I was incognito, like in a beret practically, just watching him, because I was like I really want him to just do that, but I can't really trust him. So yeah, it was like, he’s fine. He was totally fine and he was totally psyched. He was just like, “Dad chill out.”

My name is Jad Abumrad and these are 10 things that scare me.