When it comes to worrying, there are basically two kinds of people in the world: those of you who don't worry, and the rest of us who do it for you.

Listen, I envy you nonworriers. You were the kids who never believed Mom when she said you get hemorrhoids from sitting on cold cement. You never think your plane is going to hurl to earth in a fiery nosedive. You know, you just know, that you will never be the person on the sidewalk grate when it collapses.

What's it like to be you people? I don't know what drug naturally courses through your veins, but if anyone ever figures it out, let's get the IV going here.

Some people who know me are surprised to hear that I worry. "You're so cheerful," they say, but they always look like they're describing a cold sore. What? There's a law against chirpy?

Yes, I'm cheerful - despite all the evidence to the contrary.

There's a scene in "Annie Hall" that sums up the philosophy that burrowed folds in my brow by the time I was 12. In it, Woody Allen's character, Alvy, is a red-haired nerd of a kid wearing glasses the size of coffee mugs who has been dragged by his distraught mother to Dr. Flicker in Brooklyn.

"Why are you depressed, Alvy?" the doctor asks.

His mother jumps in. "It's something he read."

"Something he read, huh?"

Alvy explains. "The universe is expanding."

"The universe is expanding?"

Alvy continues. "Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything."

His mother turns to him and screeches, "Why is that your business?"

That's my mom and me, right there. When I was around 10, I sat on the living room floor and asked Mom the question that had been haunting me.

Always, she was telling us: You're good, you go to heaven. You pick up your room, you go to heaven. You apologize for telling your sister she was a foster child, you go to heaven. You stop trying to clog your brother's nose with Vaseline when he's sleeping, definitely, you go to heaven.

Finally, it dawned on me to ask: "Mom, what are we going to do all day in heaven?"

"What?"

"Do we just sit around?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Well, are we gonna be bored?"

"I said don't worry about it."

And, still, I manage to be cheerful. Please. Where's my medal?

People who love me are always trying to distract me from worrying. Just the other day, my husband suggested I read Will and Ariel Durant's book, "The Lessons of History." You'll love it, he says.

Page 14, and I'm already hyperventilating.

"Human history is a brief spot in space, and its first lesson is modesty," write the Durants. "At any moment a comet may come too close to the earth and set our little globe turning topsy-turvy in a hectic course, or choke its men and fleas with fumes or heat; or a fragment of the smiling sun may slip off tangentially."

On and on they go, outlining so many possible ends to life as we know it that now I'm surprised every time I find our house is still standing at the end of the day.

I am working on this worrying thing, because I'm worried it could kill me. That's what my loved ones keep telling me, and isn't that helpful?

So, every morning, I get up and repeat what Grandma used to say about worrying: Don't borrow trouble.

Every day, it gets a little easier. It helped that I finally got through all five seasons of HBO's "Six Feet Under," which was about life in a funeral home. Every episode opens with someone dying. I never knew there were so many ways we could go belly up. My friend Jackie told me to buy the DVDs, then she got all defensive when I said I was obsessing about death.

"I never told you to watch four shows a night," she yelled. "Who does that?"

That's all behind me now. The DVDs are DOA. Talk about worry-free.

How long can I keep this up?

I worry about that. I do.

Connie Schultz is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at cschultz@plaind.com