Faith, Family and Fatherhood
by James Hahn
Additional Catholic Mom
Columns
Worst
Case Scenario Syndrome
by James Hahn
To most people I am a fun, witty guy who appears to have it all
together. By all outward appearances I am a normal man going about the
daily grind of work and family. However, I must admit that I have a
dark, unseen, unknown side. It is my hope that in reading this others
will be able to come forward and deal with this debilitating condition I
am about to reveal. I suffer, silently but painfully, from WCSS or Worst
Case Scenario Syndrome as it is known. WCSS is more widespread than many
want to believe but now is the time to come clean.
Those who suffer from WCSS have the tendency to imagine daily events
taking turns for the worse and heading into total disaster. Their train
of thought is easily derailed by catastrophic imaginings that could
never happen, or almost never happen. The daily commute for a WCSS
sufferer goes something like this – “If this guy doesn’t back off my
bumper he’s going to hit me. Then we’ll have to pull over and wait for
the police. Unless of course he’s mad at me for driving slow. If that’s
the case, when I pull over, he’ll probably jump out of his car and try
to hit me with a tire iron, no wait, he’ll probably pull a gun. No,
he’ll jump out and the police will be right behind him and he’ll take me
hostage at gun point, no, he’s probably got explosives strapped to
himself. That’s why he’s driving the way he is. He’s planning on blowing
something up. So, he’ll carjack my car with me in it and if the police
get too close he’ll blow himself up. But I probably won’t die, yet. I’ll
be blown from the car over a bank and slowly bleed to death before they
find me and then the animals….okay enough, he turned off.”
Some of you may be laughing but this sort of thing goes on in the minds
of WCSS sufferers all the time. Normal everyday events pose potential
paralyzation as the WCSS sufferer imagines how those events will almost
surely play out. From sharpening pencils and losing limbs to changing
diapers and going blind the WCSS sufferer sees the worst case scenario
coming true in vivid living color.
Recently my wife gave birth to our fourth child, a boy. They’ll all be
boys and grow up and have all boys as well but I digress. We left our
home to drive to the hospital, an hour away, at about 11:45 PM. This was
overload for me, a silent sufferer of WCSS. Not only did I have all the
worst cases about the pregnancy running through my head, now I had an
hour long drive to imagine an even worst case scenario. As we drove
through the dark I imagined every deer in the county lining the road
like some sort of nightmarish gauntlet for me to drive through. After
the deer took out all four tires my wife felt the “need to push”. I
pulled out the other three child safety seats and placed my wife in the
back seat of the van, while it rained and hailed outside. The state
highway patrol never came and for an instant we were rear-ended but I
erased that one quick. It was too much even for me and it would have
ended the suffering too soon. By the time I had in my mind delivered the
baby by c-section with the seatbelt clasp we were at the hospital. The
doors were locked, of course, they were closed. They were probably
closed for business because too many expectant mothers had to give birth
on the sidewalk outside the locked hospital doors. A security guard told
me to move my vehicle while he escorted my wife to labor and delivery. I
should have asked to have a look at his badge to make sure he really
worked there and wasn’t going to steal my wife, baby, and the down
pillow I had bought her as a birthday gift.
Needless to say the delivery was exhausting for me, oh yeah and my wife
too, although she doesn’t suffer from WCSS. She’s phlegmatic so she
finds my syndrome funny. She probably laughs at me at night when I’m
sleeping. She probably stays awake at night and whispers these crazy
things in my ear just to watch me squirm. She’ll probably read this and
laugh, like you did, but then again you probably didn’t even read it at
all. Or you did read it and now your not ever going to read anything
I’ve written ever again and you’ll tell others not to read it either.
Pray for me and for all WCSS sufferers. We surely need it, as you can
tell because…
8/22/06
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James M. Hahn is currently the Director of
Religious Education at St. Michael Catholic Church in Worthington, OH. He
and his wife reside in southeast OH. with their four children. Visit James
at