Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a good friend. Actually I was working with a good friend, which is always fun. She and her family are looking to move so we took a small road trip to look at a possible home.
Our trip took us high on a hill and the home itself was in a setting that I would describe as a bit forresty. There were a lot of trees, shrubs, ferns……there was no manicured lawn or maintained yard to speak of. The house itself had been vacant for quite some time and in that time some uninvited guests had made it their home. My friend and I ventured throughout the house and as we turned on the light of the downstairs bathroom she let out what can only be described as the “death scream”…..and then she did the dance that usually follows the death scream, which is to say that she began jumping up and down and yelling “KILL IT!!!!!!” I was so frightened by her reaction that I immediately screamed and didn’t know why until I looked directly into the sink and saw a spider.
Now I don’t understand this fear…..I don’t feel the same way about spiders, in fact I took off my snazzy brown and copper-colored pump and proceeded to smack the ever-living “S” out of the poor defenseless beast (may God rest it’s soul). My mission was accomplished however it was too late, the damage was done and my friend turned into a complete basket case for the next 10 minutes. EVERYTHING made her jump out of her skin, it was pretty funny. I about wet my pants when her son came around her from the back and she jumped out of her skin, it was awesome.
On the trip home my friend shared stories from her childhood about the time when her dad (who shares her same fear) shot a spider with a pistol, creating a crater in the ground the size of a dinner plate. When she told me the story of how she ran full force into a web, capturing the spider square on her face I told her that it was probably a good idea that her dad didn’t have his gun! Then she told me about the time that her husband was out of town and she found a spider in the bathtub….her brilliant plan was to cover the tub with Saran wrap, hoping to rob the spider of oxygen and thereby killing it….that’s awesome.
It can be paralyzing, I get that….I’m horribly afraid of snakes to the point of passing out. Fear or phobia, call it what you will. I’m working on getting over my fear of the garbage man. Glass recycling was today and once again I’m faced with setting my glass bottles (wine and liquor mostly) at the curb for all the neighborhood to judge. I want to put a note on it that says: “Dear Neighbor, I know what you’re thinking. I swear that I did not consume all of this myself. In fact, if you add up the bottles and divide that by the days that I have to hold them before the garbage man collects them, it’s really not that bad, right?” OR at least I could put a note on the box that says “Please note that we had two parties within the last 30 days”, although now that I think about it I’m not sure I need that reputation either!
So when all was said and done my friend asked me if I thought that the home that we looked at was going to have spider problems? So I went through my mental file: Home in the woods, yes. Home with basement, yes. Older home, yep. “Yes” I replied, “Chances are pretty good that you’ll see another spider however, there are companies that you can call that will spray the perimeter of your home and that will help a lot.” Then she wanted to know if there was a spray that she could wear and I said that the pesticides might kill her so no, that’s not a good option. Ah, Good times!
This is how paranoid I am of my phobia: Prior to beginning to write this I actually thought “If I put this out there on the internet for the world to see, there is a possibility that someone will try to “get me” by using the knowledge of what my greatest fear is, against me!” Wow, I’m not only “surrounded by nuts”, I am one!
OK, so here it goes anyway. After writing yesterday’s blog post I started thinking about that damn snake. Why a snake? Why did God make the tempter in the Adam and Eve saga a snake?? Why not a cheetah, or a bear…..they both climb trees, it could be plausible. (BTW, if someone has the answer, please consider leaving me a comment. The reasoning is killing me now.)
When I turned 30, several years ago, I compiled a list (not like the one I mentioned 3 days ago). This was a list of several things that I wanted to do before I died. The item at the top of my list was “Get over my fear of snakes”. As long as I can remember I have had a fear…..no, a phobia of snakes. I know that this is a common fear for many people but my fear is far worse then anyone else’s, I just know it! I won’t go into reptile houses at the zoo. When I lived in Florida I would never walk on the grass at night because water moccasins would come onto the banks of the swamps at night. As a child my parents would have to go through my Ranger Rick magazines before I would even open one up and rip out the “snake pages”. Even writing this down is starting to give me the heebie geebies!
Size matters too. The big snakes don’t creep me out as much as the quick, smaller ones……..I just left but I’m back now. I fainted.
Anyway, so here I sit with this paralyzing fear while at the same time I have to scratch my head and wonder, why would God create snakes and then make the tempter in the story a snake? And then I remember that THAT is really where the fear began! Sunday school! This had to be my first introduction to a snake. After hearing the story of Adam and Eve I must have stored that little tidbit of information away, somewhere in the humerus zone (I know very little about the science of the brain), and then for the rest of my life I have processed this: Snakes are bad, scary, evil!
Well that’s silly. This doesn’t explain why there are un-churched people with snake phobias. I have always maintained that it’s the snakes lack of limbs, or the cold scales of their skin or the fangs………yeah that’s about all I can take. Writing about this has put me into the fetal position, and it’s really hard to type like this……………..
