The entry where I talk about dog rape and terror plots.

Every once in awhile, someone asks me if I feel safe in New York.

The answer is yes, yes I do. I feel safe around people, the more the better. Unless there are too many, that's when I get irritated and sometimes nervous. Or if the people around me smell really bad (I'm talking specifically about the guy whose armpits smelled like rotten chinese food who kept BOTH ARMS on the arm railing above his head on the subway) or if they touch me with their hair (I'm talking about the multiple ladies with frizzy old lady braids whose hair grazes my bare shoulders when I'm just trying to sit and enjoy the ride back to Astoria).

The least safe I've ever felt in my life was during my first night in Italy, when I was trying to fight jet lag and fall asleep at a normal hour in my new house. I had been told only that their dog, an obese Golden Lab who was kept penned up next to my guest house, would bark "if anybody is there." As the dog barked and I huddled in the darkness, trying to peer out the window without being seen by whatever Italian psychopath had roamed the foothills seeking out a new American nanny to rape and butcher under the cover of darkness, I honestly thought that for the first time ever, my life was in danger.

What I hadn't been told was that the dog wouldn't just bark "if someone was there," but would also bark if she saw a firefly, or if a donkey showed up and wouldn't leave, or if she was being raped by another dog who had jumped into her pen. I'm guessing the rustling I heard that night meant that the third option was happening, since more than once I saw it happening and had to tell the kids that their dog was making a new friend. Which, in a sense, she was.

But the answer is yes, even when the New York Post has headlines like BOTTLE BOMB or INSIDE THE TERROR RING. Even when there are five police officers standing "casually" in my subway station in the morning with a table for "randomly inspecting packages." Especially then, actually, since I always hope against hope that I will be selected and will be able to say things like, "OH, THOSE ARE JUST TAMPONS. BECAUSE MY UTERUS IS BLEEDING. THOSE ARE JUST TAMPONS. HUGE BOXES OF TAMPONS. OH, THAT? THATS A FEMININE PAD. FOR MY VAG. WHEN IT BLEEDS."

I knew last Thursday, when I turned on Good Morning America right when Diane Sawyer was announcing, "a breaking news story about A TERROR PLOT" in the same earnest voice she uses to announce that "HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS ARE PLAYING LIVE IN BRYANT PARK," that the impending media circus would be my main concern.

Terror levels are at new highs. You can't bring mouthwash on an airplane. The New York post is going to find new alliterative ways to write alarmist headlines.There will be more "random appearances" by cops packing into your crowded rush hour subway car.

But am I scared? Not really.

I'm more apt to be terrified by the irrational. For instance, if I see an insect or spider, I will scream bloody murder and will most likely cry. Even thinking about the fact that a cockroach I just killed may have WALKED ON MY UNDERPANTS makes me extremely nervous.

Also, taking a city bus makes me uncomfortable. I will board a subway and speed through dark tunnels but I will not board a city bus. Why? Because it's unnatural to have so many people STANDING in what is nothing more than a large car. And all those big windows just mean that when some other moving vehicle boradsides the bus my body is going to fly out onto the sidewalk to be photographed and put on the front of the New York Post next to a photo of my senior picture emblazoned with the headline: BRAINY BEAUTY DIES IN BUS BUST. Not because I am especially a brainy beauty, but because the New York Post LOVES Brainy Beauties, especially when they are dead.

So what does scare me, in this crazily desensitized world? Easy. This:

They sell these to children? For 99 cents?!