Are You Afraid of the Dark?

I'm not fond of the dark, but I'm not afraid of it. Afraid of falling down while walking in the dark, perhaps, but that's another issue.

Everybody is afraid of something.

My best-known fear, and I mean known to everyone who knows me, is snakes. Or, serpents, as we like to call them euphemistically in this house, rather than speak their dreaded name. (My father refused to call them serpents, although my mother did and sister does, but more on him later.) This is a true, full-blown phobia, and although therapy helped a little, in fact, I'm quite comfortable with my fear I wasn't in therapy for that; I had bigger fish to fry. But we did touch on the subject, and the therapist asked, quite reasonably, what I thought would happen if I were confronted with a snake.

Easy question, easy answer. I would cease to exist. If I saw a snake serpent up close -- I can hardly even type those words -- my life would not continue. I would die. From fear, maybe, I don't know. The essence of a true phobia is that you connect it with your fear of death.

I am not afraid of, for example, spiders, although plenty of people are, including people to whom I have given birth, although I don't like spiders at all. Spiders have more of a serious ick factor than they do a fear-of-death factor. I don't like them, but if I see one I can pretty much swat it with a magazine or a shoe and be done with it. The vegan Hubs will gently carry them outside, and I think that's lovely. I do not care for uninvited living creatures of any sort to share my designated space. They gotta take what comes. It's a dog-eat-dog world. You get the picture.

The house I grew up in was much more spidery than this one, for which I am grateful. Not, I mean, that we had them there, but that we don't get them much here, and the ones here are more like baby spiders, which is a little more icky, actually. I always kind of got the impression that our spider situation back home was that there were lots of big trees near the house and touching it. Probably had nothing to do with it. We have fewer touching trees here, but the house is a good ten years older than the house I grew up in, so you'd think, more. More webs here, but I'm sure that's a housekeeping issue more than anything. Although we have an unfinished basement and attic, and everything back home was finished up, a split level with no room for expansion. Anyway, makes no difference.

Which is all to say that when I reached for my jammies last night, which I more or less tuck under my pillow every morning, a little baby spider crawled out across them. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ICKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. Naturally I squashed the sucker, and then gathered up my things (and my pillowcase) and baked them in the dryer for an hour.

I don't like spiders although I don't fear them, but I have a horror of bugs or spiders crawling on me. This is one of the big reasons for me not being an outdoorsy sort of gal. That's their world, and I give it to them to have all for their own; I only need occasional safe passage through it.

When I was about four, we were away in the country for two weeks in the summer. (If you're reading closely, yes, it was the same week that the picture up there on the right of me and my mother was taken.) One afternoon, I sat with several little girls and a counselor under a tree. No idea what we were doing, but making those loop potholders seems a likely possibility. Then, all in a moment, there was a spider on me. It had dropped down out of the tree, and was maybe two or three inches across. I screamed. Everybody screamed. I screamed so loud that my knight in shining armor, who was playing baseball on a field about a hundred yards away, ran as fast as he could and swatted the thing off me. My knight was Philip, the son of our family friends, who was my big sister's age and who was the closest I ever had in life to a big brother.

So yeah, I don't like spiders on me, and not on my pajamas, either. And I ain't looking at no snakes, and no pictures of snakes, and no graven images of snakes. And my father, who dismissed my panic with those soothing words "Nobody likes them"? It wasn't until I was nearly 50 and he was over 80 that I found out that he, like me, really, really, really didn't like snakes. He just didn't let his fear carry him, because he was Mr. Stoic and could steel himself for anything, no matter how much he feared it. But it was nice to know that what I had thought was him belittling my fear wasn't actually that at all. He was trying to calm me, to put it into perspective for me. And, as it turned out, to convince himself.

watching Ocean's 11 :: entry # 1486

Eyes 0

[copied from dland]

No change yet on the hearing aid front, but my eyes are bothering me a lot today. Not my usual dry right eye that feels like it has sand in it, this is just two heavy, droopy eyelids today. Of course, today was the public debut of me in eyeshadow, so I'm sure there's a connection, but there was always that risk that putting makeup on my eyelids would cause a reaction. Maybe that's it and maybe not; maybe I'm just really tired, although I slept relatively well last night. So I don't know.

You know, I'm very into this makeup thing, which is of course a major lifestyle shift for me. I always wore makeup, but not effectively, apparently. I probably told you all this last spring when it happened, but I wore new makeup one day (not what I'm into now) and someone told me I looked great and I said "Oh, new makeup" and the Chum, one of my closest, closest pals, said "When did you start wearing makeup?" and I had to say that I always wear it, every day, for like, I don't know, 30 years, and she was astounded. As was I; why was I bothering when I must have still looked like shit?

(A word on that, take it or leave it, as you wish. I mentioned something to my sister recently about the goal of wearing makeup so that you look like you're not wearing any, and she said that's stupid; you don't have to look like you're not wearing any, because women without makeup on look like crap. The goal is just to look good.)

So here I'm doing this whole routine, and I'm telling you, not a single being (except my sister) has looked at me and said "Hey, you look good" or "I like your makeup" or any of those sort of things that women say to each other. I pointed out my eyeshadow to the Colleague this morning and she said she was just about to ask me why I looked like I had a black eye. Hmm. (Keep in mind that we have the kind of relationship where we can say to each other "Oh, what's wrong with your face today?" so that was not intended as rude and I didn't take it that way.)

That said, I also noticed around lunchtime that some of the makeup had drifted onto the collar of the mock turtleneck I was wearing, so I felt totally like trailer trash today. Must consider wardrobe more carefully tomorrow.

I selected my wardrobe today for easy access; after my first-period class I dashed across town to get blood drawn for the tests the new doctor ordered. The lab was very nice, in fact, and there's a Dunkin Donuts practically next door, so there's breakfast. (It was a fasting blood test, so no food or drink for 12 hours before.)

Once again, I was in the part of town I grew up in; I seem to be there often lately. I had to drop something else off at the lab after school (ahem), so I was back, and went into the CVS there, too, instead of the one in the center of town, close to wear I live. After another errand or two, I was back there again, picking up a quick dinner at McDonald's, and I took the route home down my old street. (It's the best way to avoid the traffic lights.) It still feels odd when I go past there. What must it be like to grow up and live in the same house you grew up in, to never leave that childhood place? I know several people who've done that, for one reason or another.

An excellent Heroes last night, but what was up with Studio 60? Vipers? They had real-life vipers on the show, and we saw them? (All right, I barely peeked through my fingers, but I think they were real.) Finally I had to close my eyes to keep the vipers out, and I fell asleep and missed the end. I'll try and catch it on the recording, but seriously. I think TV shows should be rated for snake content, not just sex and violence and bad language. I want to know how much serpent to expect so I know whether to watch or not. I'm still amazed that K didn't come running downstairs shouting "Don't look, don't look!" because all of my family members are devoted to protecting me from any possible view of the serpents. They're very good that way. Ah, she must have been asleep already.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1800