January 29, 2004

• PHOBIAS

  
  

  Everyone’s got ‘em.  There isn’t one person out there that isn’t afraid of SOMEthing.  Some people have more than others.  Here’s a few of mine… I’m sure I’m leaving out a few, but I’m too afraid to talk about those. =P  Feel free to share yours, either in the comment section or on your own blogs!

  
  

  
  Spiders

  
  

  (I was gonna put a picture of a spider here, but I don’t even like to look for/at PICTURES of spiders)

  
  

  Spiders never really bothered me at first.  I guess it started when people would tell me that spiders could bite you.  So, instead of playing with the spiders and having them crawl on my fingers, I started avoiding them.  Then, they’d show up in places like my bed, or would walk on my arm when I was watching TV and that started to freak me out.  So, I’d smash every spider I saw.

  
  

  One day, I guess some spider egg sac somewhere hatched and there were little baby spiders all over my ceiling.  So, I went about the task of killing baby spiders.  It kinda reminded me of that scene from Charlotte’s Web, where all the little baby spiders floated away, saying “Goodbye!  Goodbye!” to Wilbur.  Well, here I am crushing all those little baby spiders.  I felt really bad… until I thought of the prospect of having 20 grown-up spiders in my house.

  
  

  

  
  

  KILL IT, WILBUR!  KILL IIIIIIT!

  
  

  I’d rather catch a spider and throw it outside than smash one and then have to wipe up pieces of spider guts off the floor.  So, my first idea was to get a piece of paper and coax the spider to walk on it, then take it outside and dump it in a plant or something.  Well, that worked good for awhile until one time, as I was trying to get the spider to walk on the paper, it lept at me and started crawling on my hand, which gave me a major case of the heebie-jeebies.

  
  

  So, DramCo Enterprises went to work and I invented the following:

  
  

  

  
  

  It’s the Super Awesome Spider Catcher!™  Basically, it’s a jar and it’s taped to one of those sports water bottles.  The first version of the Super Awesome Spider Catcher™ was just a jar, but I determined that my hand would still be within striking distance of the spider if it decided to jump or envelop me in its web or something.  So, I taped the water bottle to it, leaving me with well over a foot of clearance between me and the spider.

  
  

  What happens is, I see a spider, I put the Super Awesome Spider Catcher™ over the spider and I slide a piece of semi-rigid paper between the floor/wall and the jar, making sure there’s no room for the spider to escape the jar.  Then, while keeping the piece of paper over the top, I tip the whole thing over so the spider falls into the jar (or the spider walks into the jar on its own).  Finally, I go outside, take off the piece of paper and toss the spider onto the ground.

  
  

  Yes, I go to great lengths to avoid my phobias.

  
  

  Scary Movies

  
  

  I guess I didn’t have much exposure to scary stuff when I was young.  I remember staying up late and caught an episode of Night Gallery that my mom was watching.  There was this doll that was possessed or something and was going around killing people.  So, there’s this one scene where the unsuspecting lady puts the doll in a box and then goes downstairs.  The house becomes all dark and creepy, the music gets all eerie, the lady looks up the staircase and there’s the doll standing at the top of the stairs.

  
  

  

  
  

  You’d freak out too if you saw this thing coming to kill you!

  
  

  Uhhh… I had a few nightmares that night.

  
  

  So, I pretty much avoided anything remotely scary on TV after that.  A few years later, my parents had this great movie to take us to… Jaws.  What a grand idea.  I had frikkin’ nightmares for a whole week.  They all had to do with me being in water… oceans, lakes, swimming pools, bathtubs, whatever… and a huge Dram-eating shark.

  
  

  

  
  

  Scary movies haven’t bothered me since, except for the time I got dragged to see Jaws II (THANKS MOM AND DAD!).  I’ve seen the Friday the 13ths and the Nightmare on Elm Streets, Phantasm, Signs, etc. without any problems… heck, some of them were pretty doggone funny.  But I generally avoid scary movies even today.

  
  

  And needless to say, I didn’t go see Arachnophobia.

  
  

  Small Spaces

  
  

  I don’t think it’s the small spaces that gets me all oogly-boogly, but getting stuck in small places.  Something like crawling under the house.  I’m not crawling under anybody’s house.  There’s not only the chance that I crawl under there and then some beam or post pins me down, but a lot of it has to do with the enormous possibility of spiders lurking.

  
  

  I think this all stems from this one time when me and my brother were playing Star Trek in my grandparent’s backyard.  That’s right, we didn’t have freakin’ Nintendo or Pokemon to keep us occupied, we had to go out and make our own games.  Anyway, in order to get to the planet, we had to take the transporter, just like in the TV show.  Well, our transporter was a water heater closet which was attached to the house, but accessed from the backyard.

  
  

  

  
  

  Beam me up, Scotty!

  
  

  So, I walked into the closet, closed the door and did the transporter sound… bweeeeeeeeeeeee… and…

  
  

  Now, this door doesn’t have a door knob on both sides. It only has one on the outside and it’s not even a door knob.  It’s like this little 1/2 inch metal disc that’s kinda tough to turn… apparently, too tough for a younger brother to turn.  So, I try to open the door and it somehow closed on me (whether Rob turned it closed – which was easier than turning it open – or somehow the latch closed when I shut it).  So, I’m banging on the door and telling/yelling at Rob to open the door.  I bend down and look through the grate on the bottom of the door (which is exactly like the one in the picture above, except it’s at the bottom) in time to see Rob freakin’ out and running away… leaving me by myself… locked in the water heater closet.  So, I did what every sane little kid would do… SCREAM MY FRIKKIN’ HEAD OFF.  My mom heard me from next door (or Rob went and got her… I don’t know which one, but I’m guessing Rob didn’t inform her and instead hid in our bedroom with some cookies or something) and got me out.

  
  

  Nowadays, small spaces don’t bother me… elevators, crawl spaces, etc.  However, have me crawl around in some small space and then get me stuck somehow… I’m guessing you’d have one freaked out Dram.

  
  

  High Places

  
  

  

  
  

  Again, it probably isn’t the actual idea of being really high, but the idea of plummeting to my death from that height that I’m afraid of.  However, this is a fear I will usually face.  Me and some friends went and visited The Arch in St. Louis.  Heck, I was one of the ones that suggested that we go up to the top… it’s the touristy thing to do and how many times am I gonna go visit St. Louis?

  
  

  Well, everything was juuuuuust fine until it was time to look out of the observation windows at the top of The Arch.  For those of you that haven’t been there before, you take a cramped, rikkety, five-person elevator inside The Arch up to the top (no problem) and there’s an observation deck there with an arched floor (no problem).  There’s small windows that people can look through to see outside (no problem).  In order to look through these windows, however, you have to lean forward, pretty much laying on this platform they have in front of the window… so you’re laying at about a 45 degree angle while looking at the ground below.

  
  

  BIG problem.

  
  

  Man, in that position, I felt like I was trying to jump off the doggone Arch.  There’s nothing to hold onto, just you laying on that platform.  We spent like 10 minutes up there and I would look through a window for about 10 seconds and then I’d feel all icky-wicky (I’m just making these terms up, if you didn’t already know).   I did look out of the windows like 8 or 9 times, but yeah, that wasn’t as fun as visiting something like FAO Schwartz.

  
  

  

  
  

  Look Vicky, that bear is WAAAAAAY bigger than it should be!

  
  

  Rollercoasters are another thing.  Flip me upside-down, send me traveling down the track at 80 miles an hour, loop-de-loop me, etc., just don’t send me straight down.  Great America had a ride called The Edge, which basically were seats that slowly took you straight up in the air, they let you see the view from up there for a little bit and then sent you rocketing straight down.  There’s no way in the world you’re gettin’ me on a ride like that.  Sky diving?  Forget it.  Bungee jumping?  Yeah, right.

  
  

  I always wanted to go hang-gliding, but that whole “steer the hang glider wrong and crash into the earth below” thing has kinda deterred me from trying.

  
  

  Yeah, I know… I’m a wuss.

  
  
  
  

  So, if I’m ever watching Jaws on an airplane that suddenly plummets into a nosedive while I’m stuck in that cramped little bathroom that has spiders coming out of the sink… I just might set the record for the loudest scream.

  • 6:29 am
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