Day 25: Fears - What are you afraid of?

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 25: Fears

Everyone is afraid of something. Fear of heights, fear of enclosed spaces, death, illness, public speaking, water, fire, the list goes on and on.

Ask 99% of women what they are afraid of and among other things they might mention spiders. I happen to be one of them.

I’ve read up on the subject and some say that the fear of spiders is hereditary. Which is interesting really. So does that mean that our parents are responsible for our fears? If they had given us a spider as a pet, instead of a kitten, a puppy or a bunny, would we have grown to love spiders?

Personally, I can’t imagine such thing. Can you? Can you imagine sitting with a spider on your lap and cuddling it? Curling up with it in bed? Proudly sharing pictures of it on Facebook ... I didn’t think so.

I often wondered why spiders were created in the first place. Some might say that they play a valuable role in nature and I understand that, they probably do some good. What I don’t understand is why they have to be so ugly.

When spiders were created, why couldn’t they be made to look like hamsters, koala bears, pandas or even squirrels. I can’t think of a single person who is afraid of these creatures. For one reason or another they might not be fond of them because they are dangerous or carry diseases, but nobody goes running, screaming, when they see one.

And believe me, I’ve done my fair share of screaming. As afraid as I am of spiders, they seem to be very fond of me. My mom, dad, or brother never came across a spider, but if there was one in the house, I would be the one to find it.

When I was growing up, I regularly saw them. I saw them in the basement, in the hallway, in the bathroom, or their personal favorite, in my bedroom.

Every night when I went to bed, I switched on the light of my bedroom and did a thorough inspection of the ceiling, walls and floor. If my folks heard a scream, mam would instruct dad to go upstairs, armed with a shoe.

The worst case ever was when I literally came face to face with a huge spider who was sitting next to the light switch on the wall. She had one of her eight legs on the light switch and another on the doorframe. As I flipped on the light my nose was literally less than an inch away from the monster and in addition to an ear- piercing scream, I stopped breathing. 

As I was told later, by the time my dad and brother came upstairs and found me on the landing, I was turning blue. My brother had to slap me out of it.

Since that time, I’ve encountered a number of family members of the spider, from babies to grandfathers, and they all give me the creeps.

Two years ago, I thought there was hope for me yet when I met Karen. She told me that she too had suffered from a severe case of arachnophobia until she decided to do something about it.

“And what did you do?” I asked her.

“Hypnosis or something?”

“I adopted a spider,” Karen said. “I bought a tarantula, I placed it in a glass case in the living room, and I observed it every day.”

Was the woman out of her mind! She was afraid of spiders and she invited a spider to live with her! A tarantula no less! Never, not even in my wildest dreams would I even consider living with a spider under one roof. No, no way, absolutely not!!!

Karen invited me for a visit, so I could observe the spider, how it ate, drank, washed itself and slept. I politely declined. Not a hair on my head even considered this.

When she offered to bring the spider to work, so we could all have a look, Brian strongly advised her not to do this.

“Why not?” Karen asked.

“Because I say so,” Brian told her. “If you do, I go straight to personnel and file a complaint against you. I’m not kidding. Don’t you dare bring that thing in here.”

Hmm, it would appear women are not the only ones who are squeamish about spides, some men are too.

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The price is ... wrong

Quite a few of us are familiar with “The Price is Right”, a TV show where contestants guess the price of various items, ranging from a car to a bottle of shampoo.

Everyone who watches the show invariably guesses along with the contestants. Some are quite good at it while others don’t seem to have a clue about retail. I’m one of those people.

With little things, such as groceries I’m pretty good with guessing prices, but where it comes to bigger items such as lawn mowers, cars, and real estate, I’m way, way off.

My latest miscalculation involves a window. Not an ordinary window, but a fake one. Let me explain …

I recently found myself in the basement of a building. Even though I was several feet underground, I saw windows everywhere, displaying lifelike images of a sun-drenched forest, a babbling brook, and a beautiful coastline. Since I was in the heart of Toronto, all of those scenes were quite impossible. But it was a nice idea to make the basement less claustrophobic.

Not only did the windows display clear images, they were accompanied by birdsong. Throughout the basement, I heard what I thought were finches, chickadees, canaries, nightingales and a few birds I couldn’t identify.

I was so smitten with the idea that I asked for the name of the manufacturer of these windows, and once home I looked up the website. Since no prices were listed, I contacted the seller by email.

“This won’t come cheap,” Dieter warned me. Yeah well, maybe not, but a window like this would look great in my bedroom and kitchen. Not only would the window make for a great look but the birdsong would help me fall asleep. If such a window cost $200 or $300 it would be worth it.

When the seller emailed me back the next day my dreams were crushed and I was once again reminded just how bad I am with guessing the cost of items. The window did not cost a few hundred dollars but … (are you sitting down?) $13,000. Needless to say that my idea of this beautiful window went out the window.

I’m not the only one bad at guessing prices. Where it comes to my son, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

He recently had his heart set on turtles, miniature aquarium turtles. He guessed these little critters to be $10 or $20 each.

Before rushing out to buy these aquarium turtles he went online to research their ideal habitat. He would need an aquarium filled with a little water, some dry land, rocks, moss, and a special light to keep the turtles warm. All of this was doable, the miniature turtles, however, were not.

Dieter has grossly underestimated their cost. When he visited a pet store, he found out that these turtles cost $240 each. So that idea went out the window too.

Needless to say, neither of us are likely to apply to be a contestant on “The Price is Right”.

I'm leaving

Fall has arrived. Yes, I know, officially fall arrived on September 21^st but on that day, and the days that followed, Toronto enjoyed a bright sun in a blue sky and a temperature warm enough to be outside in shirt sleeves.

Today all that has changed. The sun is nowhere to be seen, the sky is a mass of grey clouds, and it’s cold. To make matters worse, it’s raining, and rain always makes a day seem even colder.

Ordinarily, I love a rainy day, the harder it rains the better I feel. I get really creative or I curl up on the sofa with a good book, with tea and chocolates within reach.

When I have to go out I don’t like a rainy day quite as much. I have to put on a jacket and instead of sunglasses take an umbrella along. Not that an umbrella guarantees me staying dry, I’ve had more than one umbrella ruined when the wind blew it inside out.

Some might say that fall is beautiful, and I agree. The Don Valley in Toronto displays a magnificent array of colors, but for how long. Soon those yellow, orange and red leaves fall off the trees and then they lay on the ground, rotting away. Except for chrysanthemums flowers are dying and nature loses all its color.

And from here on it’s only going to get worse. If meteorologists are to be believed, we’re having a tough winter ahead of us. We’ve had a wonderful long hot summer, so they are predicting an awful long and cold winter. Ugh, I can just imagine, temperatures way below zero, snow up to our ears, black ice … well, it is Canada.

If Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, to me this is the most miserable time of the year. Fall has only just started and I’ve already had enough of it.

In winter, with packs of snow, nature at least gets transformed into a magical landscape and there’s some fun to be had. Skiing, ice skating, throwing snowballs at each other, but what’s to be done in the fall … throwing wet leaves at each other?

Maybe I should do like the Canadian geese, head south and wait for winter to pass. I can’t fly, but I can walk.

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