Completely Rational Fear

There are many things in my life that cause me to fear but only one comes to mind that causes my pulse to quicken, sweat to come pouring forth from my body (not glistening mind you, manly amounts of sweat), and my throat to tighten in such a way that breathing becomes almost impossible.

SNAKES

Creepy, crawly, slithering, scary snakes.

I'm not sure when and where this fear came about. In fact as a child I had no problems with snakes. I remember as a tomboy riding my bike to this pond/swamp which was infested with all kinds of snakes and having no fear at all. I also remember a neighbor having a large boa constrictor that I willingly let be placed on my shoulders (not in a trashy britney spears type way but more in a curious fourth grader type way). As a child I also had not problem with the snakatorium (i know there is a different name for this at the zoo but my mind is drawing a blank so my made up name will have to do).

But then, there are those memories of finding a snake in a toilet (TRUE STORY) at a lake house and refusing to use the bathroom for the next two days without someone examining the entire bathroom with a flashlight for a good five minutes before I would proceed (AND I would flush the toilet about 10 times to make sure any snakes who might be hiding in the pipes were ruthlessly flushed into oblivion before I placed my precious hiney on said toilet.) There is also the time that one of our dock daddies at camp came into the office with a snake and shoved it in my face and I proceeded to crawl up on my desk and then under it to escape the evil creature all while crying and reaching mass hysterics (please note: snakes in face cause Katie to react in weird ways). Speaking of camp, there were also the many images of dock daddies and counselor pounding snakes to death in the lake with canoe paddles that created a healthy fear of snakes in the water and made me say a special prayer that God will allow nothing to touch me for fear that I would have a heart attack right there in the lake in front of children.

This fear causes me to sometimes react in a very irrational way. For instance, I was with a group of women doing some thrift store shopping (don’t ask, they’re my “old lady friends” and I am just along for the laughs) when we came across what might have been the largest snake I have seen in the wild. It had to be at least 6 inches in diameter and was just plain scary looking. My friend, who was driving, swerved to run over the snake and I immediately shrieked and pulled my feet into my lap. Why, you ask? Because in my mind the large scary snake has now somehow jumped into the undercarriage of the car and is making its way into the interior to bite and eat me. Irrational? Yes, but still very possible in my mind.

This brings me to the weekend when I went to watch X-Men United with a friend.. There must be some connection between mass-appeal sci-fi and horrors movies because the majority of previews for X-Men were of the horror genre. A good horror doesn’t really scare me all that but my friend, on the other hand, covered her face for all the horror previews. I will fully admit I laughed at her and her small yelps as she would glance at the screen and become more scared. Little did I know that I would soon be doing the same thing because the next preview was for a movie about:

SNAKES

ON A PLANE

I quickly pulled my hoodie up to cover my eyes and drew my legs into my seat, because again I somehow rationalized that snakes could jump from the screen into the dark theater and make their way down the floor to my feet. I knew that it was an irrational reaction but then I began to think of how perfectly sick that would be for someone to sneak snakes into a theater when that movie was playing and release them. Sick, twisted, and yet oh so possible.

And so the fear continues.