I was in my early twenties and had to take a cross-country plane flight. The trouble was, it had been a dozen years since I’d been on a plane, and I’d developed a case of nerves. So I read a book about it.

In the book I found a few things that stuck with me. At the time, it said that to die in a plane crash, you’d have to take two flights a day for 16,000 years. OK, good odds! It also compared a plane in turbulence to a motorboat going over waves; you want the boat to go up and down and move with the water. That’s what keeps it safe. Same with a plane.

The book also suggested visiting the cockpit before taking off. This was pre-9/11, so I asked a stewardess if I could. She showed me in. The pilot asked, “Did you want to learn how to fly, so you can be a pilot?” “No,” I said, “I’m just interested in what’s what.” He showed me the controls and the printout of the weather pattern, so we could fly above it at the right moment. I ended up loving to fly.

I still approach fears the same way. A couple of years ago, I needed cataract surgery. They use a machine to get your exact prescription, then they have these soft lenses custom-made to match it. They cut a circle in the lens cap in the front of your eye, lift the flap, suck out your biological lens with a little vacuum, throw it away, and take your synthetic lens all folded up and let it open up on your eye. Then they close your eye back up. In a very real way, it’s like they seared your eyeglasses into your head permanently.

By the time my eye surgery day came, I was pretty relaxed. In fact, while I was waiting in the prep room beforehand, the other patients on their gurneys were answering the nurses’s questions in nervous monosyllables. Yes. No. Me? I was gabbing with a nurse about birdhouses and what the best seed was to attract cardinals.

It’s not that I’m particularly brave or smart. And I don’t want to know every scary detail. I just have this rule for myself: I want to know about what I fear in enough detail that I can entertain my friends with it. If I have that, I’m good.