the woman who couldn't be scared

So I was reading this article about a brain-damaged woman who doesn’t have the mental capacity to feel fear. She has a rare genetic disease that damaged a brain structure called the amygdala. Apparently the amygdala (uh-MIG-duh-luh) has something to do with making people feel afraid when they’re in threatening situations. If so, I know for a fact mine’s working, because I’m already scared about that trip to Walmart I have to make this afternoon where the just-5-shopping-days-‘til-Christmas crowd will be doggedly pushing shopping carts full of crap up and down crowded aisles while alternately talking on cell phones and slapping at their howling kids. However, this lady would probably jump at the chance to mix it up with this crowd, as she can’t feel fear. Just imagine…dangle her off a 5th floor balcony like Blanket Jackson- no reaction. Put her in the back booth of a dark restaurant with Jeffrey Dahmer, party of 2? No problemo. She can’t be afraid.

And they know this about her because the article was chock full of examples from a case study conducted on her lack of fear. In one experiment they blasted her with air horns every time she saw a blue-colored square on a screen. Despite repeated blasts, she developed no fearful reaction to the blue square (though she probably did develop a splitting headache, I know I would). A man with a knife to her throat? Not so much as a gulp. Researchers took her to horror movies. Yawn. They drug her through haunted houses. The monsters ran from her. The researchers exposed her to venomous snakes and spiders. Hello sweetums, give mama a kiss.

Now I’m no expert, and I confess to a very weedy C in the one science class they forced me to take my freshman year at Baylor, but you don’t have to be a mastermind to recognize that what this lady with the defunct amygdala really needs to fear is that bunch of researchers trying to scare her witless. I mean really, hasn’t the poor brain-damaged woman already suffered enough?

But I can just imagine them huddled somewhere in their white coats plotting their diabolic experiments for this month…

I’m telling her she ate turkey stored at improper food temperatures.

I’m going to tie her to a chair next to a dried out Christmas tree and strike a match.

I think I’ll put a dead rat in her Christmas stocking.

Personally, I doubt any of those will make her bat an eyelash. If they really want to jump start her amygdala, all they need to do is threaten to put her in a sealed room with a loop track playing nothing but George Michael’s song “Last Christmas”. That should scare the $#*! out of anybody!