Things that scare us silly

Many of the women in family have been scared of snakes. Not just your normal “I don’t care for snakes” kind of scared, but burn the house down the with the baby still inside if I see one kind of scared. I suppose that when you hear someone mentioning “irrational, mind-numbing” to describe something, that might come close to describing my mother, and her mother when they caught sight of a snake.

The odd thing was that we grew up in South Florida, where there are literally dozens of different varieties of snakes to be found. It didn’t matter that of the dozens of varieties, only six of them are poisonous. They were all equally frightning, no matter size or appearance.

My mother would run screaming from the house, not even pausing to put on a robe if she saw a snake in the house, but spiders didn’t bother her at all.

I think Florida has more varieties of snakes than spiders, but there are some fairly impressive spiders to be seen. Natively, the only ones that are poisonous are the four varieties of widow spiders, and you have to wander various parts of the state to find all four of them.

Around the world though, you find a lot of people who sport an irrational fear of snakes or spiders, or even both at the same time. I’m not sure what drives this fear, as it apparently is not a fear that babies come with when first born. It’s obviously something we’ve learned.

Another common fear that humans exhibit, is fear of heights. I’ll admit that this is one that I have sometimes. For example, I doubt I would be able to stand on that glass floor at the Sears Tower, or on the glass bridge that hangs over the Grand Canyon. But I have no problem standing on a roof, or looking out the window from the upper floors of a tall building.

When I first came to Denver, the company I work for  had their offices on the 13th floor of a building that was pretty much all glass.  My boss arranged all the furniture in his office to block access to the window, and had his desk situated so that he could not see out. I used to enjoy going in there, and while talking to him, finding the one spot he’d left decently clear, put my toes right up against the glass and look down. It usually made him very nervous.

Then there are people who are afraid of open spaces, or closed spaces. Children are often afraid of the dark, but then grow out of it. I remember as a child of six or seven, having nightmares of the monster under my bed, or the even uglier one who lived in the closet, and laying in bed in the dark  for what seemed like hours, listening to them breath. I suppose all children have some variation of this, that eventually fades away.

My partner still has nightmares. I’m not sure what drives them, I know that a close-up of a spider on TV may cause them, or a particularly gruesome scene from an episode of “Bones” or “CSI” may cause him to start running in his sleep while making unintelligible sounds into his pillow. A sound elbow into his ribs usually quiets him down for the rest of the night.

I don’t recall the last time I had a nightmare about anything. In fact, I usually don’t even remember my dreams. I know I dream, I’ve read that people who don’t dream go crazy, and while I might be a bit unusual, I don’t think I approach crazy.

We humans are afraid of all sorts of things, some of these fears drive us to do irrational things, some of these fears prevent us from enjoying our surroundings to their fullest.

My daughter will travel across the country to ride a rollercoaster, while you couldn’t get me on one with chains.

I suppose if we sat down and faced our fear with some level of honest and logical inspection, we’d recognize that they are irrational, and with that recognition, perhaps begin to face them head on.

Or not.