It's said that panic separates the heroes from the cowards.

When your life stands on the spider's web above the gapping gullet of the spider, would you lash out uncontrollably, binding the sticky web to your limbs? Or would you calmly stare the spider in the eye, then reach out and kick it in the nose so it falls off the web?

Or would you go, "Ick, a spider!" and swat it with a newspaper before the analogy even had a chance to sink in, because you're an arachnocidal maniac?

The movie the "Titanic" was just on TV. It made me wonder: am I a DiCapriocidal maniac? And more importantly, what would I do in a panic?

Many people did things in the heat of the moment (or, in Titanic's case, the "cold" of the moment, ha!).

Some leapt into the chilling waters, some held their loved ones and cried, some pushed and shoved friends to get off the boat. It was chaos, total and utter chaos.

The medical definition of panic is: An overpowering feeling of fear that causes uncontrollable acts.

I wonder. What would I do in a panic? Would I act uncontrollably? Would I lash out and scream? Would I resign and just sit there and cry? Or would I remain calm and collected?

Firefighters, police officers, and other hazardous professions are trained to deal with panic and react rationally. For them, this comes with years and years of training and conditioning.

Children growing up in gang-ridden neighborhoods are similar conditioned. As are children in war-ridden countries. When violence is part of your everyday life, you become desensitized to it. You have to; it's a coping mechanism.

How about for those who don't have such conditioning? I would be a fool to ascribe an advantage to those children; no one should grow up with so much violence.

There are other ways to learn to deal with panic, however. For me, I did it through extreme sports.

Now don't get me wrong. While part of me loves the adrenalin rush, I'm hardly an adrenalin junkie. I've done bungee jumping and sky diving. I'd really like to try hang gliding and cliff diving one day. But riding a motorcycle over a pit of man-eating sharks and through a ring of fire? I'll pass.

I'm terrified of heights. It's practically acrophobia. That's why I've bungee jumped & sky dived: to face one of my biggest fears and conquer it. And what an adrenalin rush it is!

I've since eased up that acrophobia. It's still terrifying, of course. Looking over the ledge of a tall building still scares the bejeebers out of me. But instead of instant cold fear, I now feel a tingle in my stomach—a tingle of excitement and adrenalin.

And you know what? It's actually helped temper my feelings of panic in other aspects of life too. Public speaking was (and still is) terrifying as all hell, but when I think back to that first free fall out of an airplane, adrenalin shoots into my veins and I'm a little less nervous.

Picture this: you're looking outside an airplane 14,000 feet in the air. The ground is a quilt of mismatched patches below. The wind is howling at you at 120mph. Your stomach is crawling into your nutsack.

Then you're given the order. "Jump!"

That first fall is absolute terror. Cold icy terror. Your mind scrambles like a hamster in an electrified cage. You ask yourself, "What the hell am I doing??"

Then you're free falling. It's amazing. You're floating above the world. The horizon at your fingertips, clouds by your side, and adrenalin coursing through your veins. It's a euphoric Zen.

When I open my eyes again, the public speech I'm about to make is a little less scary. I don't know if it's a form of conditioning or just the adrenalin, but it works.

No spider is going to eat me, nosiree

. . .

Have you ever been in a panic situation?