Fandango’s Provocative Question #172
The nature of a phobia is its irrationality. I theorize if you developed the fear over time, you probably had a reason. It might not be a sensible reason, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. Something happened that triggered that response. I suppose it’s still a phobia if any encounter with whatever it is makes you crazy.
I have a phobia about spiders, though it extends to some degree to all bugs. Spiders make me jump out of my skin. Really huge spiders, like the wolf spiders that live in our woods (which are the size of the palm of my hand or even bigger) are heart-stoppers. I’m even afraid to step on them. They are so big. Yuck. I think if one landed on me I might have an immediate fatal heart attack. On the spot. Spider and all.
Garry has an irrational fear of snakes. My first husband was scared stiff of ticks. Owen is terrified of centipedes and millipedes.
All these fears came out of nowhere and seem to have arrived when we were too small to remember what triggered them. No amount of rational explanation makes them go away. My fear of insects has slightly decreased since moving to the country because you just can’t live here and not encounter insects. So I’ve made a deal with spiders. They can live here, just not in my house. Live outside and do your thing, but outside. I’ve never been irrationally afraid of stinging insects, though I hate hornets and wasps who are aggressive and will sting you for no reason at all. They are just plain mean.
Bees are pollinators. They keep the flowers and vegetables growing. They are free to come and go. Most bees are quite peaceable and if you don’t threaten them, they won’t bother you. Most of the bees we see these days are actually “farm” bees, not wild. We need them. Without bees, we won’t have food.
Garry hates bugs, but he’s really terrified of snakes. His hatred of bugs keeps him inside more than outside, so he doesn’t notice the big garter snakes on our property — and I don’t tell him about them either. What he doesn’t know won’t make him crazy.
He did get bitten by a poisonous spider and spent a few months taking antibiotics and recovering. How ironic. Brown Recluse Spiders are small, but they have a powerful venom. Good thing it wasn’t me who got bit. I would never have left the house again.
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Categories: #FPQ, #Sketchbook, Anecdote, Drawings, Fandango's One Word Challenge, Provocative Questions
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I left a comment but it didn’t seem to take. Did you do those sketched exclusively for this post? They’re great.
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You just got bumped off my list so I just put you back on. WordPress is at it again. Yes, I did them for this post. I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t something someone else drew and I figured well, I might as do my own. It was interesting because it was the first illustration I did intentionally for a particular post.
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You could perhaps get a job illustrating blog posts! 😉
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That would really be a lot of fun. Writing is always to some degree “work,” probably because I was a working writer for nearly 40 years. But art — designs, diagrams, visual explanations of complicated concepts — was always fun. When I was writing and designing manuals, It was a pleasure designing (via computer, not by hand) graphics to go with text. Unless they were straight screen dumps, I enjoyed doing them. If I did them well, I could explain a lot of very complicated material with one clear diagram or graphic.
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Spiders and snakes are two very popular phobias. Excellent sketches. Did you do them exclusively for this post?
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Jack Skellington I drew because it’s a favorite character of Owen’s and he asked me to draw it. He has a tattoo of this character — in this pose — on his calf. But I never used it for anything. The other picture was drawn for this post. I always wanted to be an illustrator.
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