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05/15/2006
May 15
For years I didn't know that my father had a phobia about snakes. But one day a garter snake had found its wa into our garage and I, with my 15 year old bravado, said I would take it out to the edge of the yard and turn it loose. My father did not hesitate to let me do it. Nor did he watch over me as I scooped the snake into the wheel barrow and wheel it out to the lilacs. My mother later told me that Dad didn't like snakes.
It was years and years later that I learned he couldn't even go to an Indiana Jones movie because of the snake scene. My aunt told me when Dad died that when he was a little boy he would wake up screaming. His nightmares were about snakes.
Mine are about insects. It used to be that I couldn't be in the same room as a spider. I would scream and huddle in a corner of my bed when I saw one. Dad would come running, fearing perhaps that I was beng attacked. And then he would mutter and say the spider was more afraid of me than I was of it, something I had a difficult time believing. But he always murdered the creature, wadding it up in a piece of toilet paper, or batting it to the floor and stpping on it.
Today I less terrified. But generally no less violent against them. I will squash them or drown them, flush them, or suck them up with a vacuum cleaner. Always a shudder goes through me, though. My teeth bite at my lower lip. Eight legs are too many. More than eight is a nightmare. Centipedes, silver fish--instant disgust, instant recoil.
But even butterflies repel me. Six legs are too many. I will never go to a butterfly house.
I garden with gloves because of insects. I cannot touch them, and I cannot tolerate any of them touching me. No grubs. No slugs. No worms. No larvae of any sort.
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