fear

A nice neighbor man came over to help me parallel park my car this afternoon. He'd welcomed me to the neighborhood the other day when I was unloading boxes from my car, and he saw me trying to squeeze into this tight spot today and trotted over to help guide me in (even though I could have done it without him easily enough; yes, girls CAN parallel park). "You're afraid. Don't be afraid," he said. At first he was referring to being afraid of hitting the cars on either side of me, but then it turned into, "Don't be afraid of relationships, don't be afraid of new things in life." Maybe he was being pretentious and presumptuous, but it actually seemed oddly appropriate.