School of Fear blog post

          I am reading the interesting book, School of Fear. The book is about four neurotic children, about twelve or younger that have insane and unreasonable fears about the most common objects. For example, one girl goes around with a veil over her head and bug repellent, a boy faints if he sees a pond, another boy calls his parents, sister, and three brothers at school every hour to see of they are alive or not. The fourth girl has a reasonable fear, as she is claustrophobic. They all are a problem for their parents and friends so they are sent to a school to get over their fears. I have not finished the book yet and I am only about 100 pages in. However, I think that by the end of the book, they will get over their fears. But right now, they are pretty much scared out of their minds.

          In School of Fear, each of the kids have big problems. In one story, a girl named Madeline is deathly afraid of spiders, and other bugs. Basically anything that moves. She wears a veil on her head at all times, and carries bug repellent. even though besides her phobia she is pretty much sane, with good manners and a normal life in England, she can't get over the fear of bugs. Her night gown has a built in veil, so that when she sleeps at night no bugs will bother her (even though she has a mesh canopy bed). I think she is insane. anyone who is that afraid of bugs and spiders, needs to do some research. If there were no bugs, how would break down the dirt for wildlife? Who would eat those mosquitoes that you hate? I think that she had a bad experience with bugs once and has a hard time forgetting it. A boy named Theo is scared of death, ever since his grandmother died. He would call his family members often to make sure they were alive, or dead. His brothers thought he was neurotic, his sister thought he was annoying, and his parents thought he was just had issues. He was always reading death reports in the news paper, and would never take the train in fear the tracks would light on fire, or he would get pushed into the tracks. Worse, he could barely take the car in fear they would get into an accident. I think when his grandmother died, he became obsessed with death because he didn't want to lose any of his family members, like he lost his grandmother.

         There are two other children going to the school. One is Garrison, the most popular and attractive boy in his middle school, with blond hair and blue eyes. He seems normal, he plays sports, gets love notes from girls, and goes to school. But he is hydrophobic. For those of you who haven't guessed what that is yet, it is the fear of water. Not drinking water or showers, but deep water like oceans, ponds, lakes, rivers, and so on. Until the bus ride there, he seems pretty normal to Madeline, until they go over a bridge. He notices, and hopes for dry land. Instead he finds what could be a lake or ocean and freaks out, and faints. I can understand the fear of drowning, to a certain point, but  can't understand the fear of water itself. As someone who comes from a wind-surfing dad, and and a former swim-racing mom, this one of the harder things to understand. As a surfer myself, I have had to hold my breath for a while under water while my board goes over my head. Back to the hydrophobe. I think, like Madeline, he had a bad experience with water, or trying to swim that made him scared, and I will most likely find out later in the book. As for the fourth girl, there isn't much too tell. The most insane thing she has ever done so far is hit her principal in the head because she didn't want to go on the elevator, and the stairs were just painted. I can understand the fear of small spaces, I don't like them much either, but I would have sucked it up and went in the elevator.

All in all, this is why I think that the new students of School of Fear are insane and neurotic.