Ringing the Bell, Erasing a Phobia

This holiday season you may have found a bell ringer in front of your local supermarket or maybe you’ve seen them at the mall. Here’s the story of one of those bell ringers. My name is Annie, that’s what my friends call me. I am 27 years of age and until I began “ringing the bell” I had a phobia of people. Phobia meaning “fear of.” I had envisioned all the immensely horrifying possibilities of being surrounded by people. I had cooked up the worst things in my head to being shot, being robbed, being laughed at. Any mean, unkind thing a person could do I pictured it happening to me and was more than terribly frightened when I started my job.

You see as a bell ringer you are supposed to convey through expressions and tone of voice a cheerful disposition under any circumstances. What if people who I came across were not cheerful to me, was that to be conceived as an insult against me personally, was that just who they were? I won’t lie I came across those people. Maybe they saw through my plastered fake smile but did they notice my fear. Their smug faces scared me, for I’d no idea of the intentions that lie behind their uncaring eyes.

I have worked for a week or so ringing the bell and have found that because of a few spectacular people with immense kindness and knowledge of the true holiday spirit I smile freely, no quiver in my lips, no narrowing of my eyes, no more fear. I go out in public after ringing the bell and find myself speaking pleasantly with another human being. I talk to everyone and anyone I can. I spent so long being rejected, ignored and afraid that now I feel free.

This message is to anyone who has ever feared being yourself. Fear can kill your possibilities to let in the good. Talk, smile, be for real in your actions and nomatter what you look like, nomatter what faults you may have you’ll find a great new world. I ring my bell outside your local grocery store or sometimes outside the mall you go to, remember to say hi to me when you drop by because I will certainly be wanting to talk to you not only as a bell ringer but as a woman whose phobia of people was erased.