20 thoughts on “Weekend Question Thread”

  1. Rodents. Cannot deal with them. Bugs don’t, uh, bug me.
    I also have a phobia about driving across bridges, which I can do but I let Dr A drive when it’s absolutely necessary. The irony is that I’ve lived almost all of my life in places where there are lots of the suckers.

  2. well, i had a deep MRI of my spine, so i can say, i is NOT claustrophobic. it is true i do not like bugs ON me, but i don’t think i have a phobia…i am a-ok with heights. hmm. i like snakes. i like vermin…dead vermin? i don’t like those. dissection? i could NOT do it. but is that a phobia?

  3. Fear of stuff falling on top of me, like cantilevered signs, balconies, etc. Heights are fine; being under a high thing is scary.

  4. I don’t mind small to medium to large bugs but little tiny flying insects that you can’t see but can hear drive me freaking batty. Bzzzz…hmmmm…bzzzzz…AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!

  6. I have a fear of being abandoned. I’m MUCH improved in my ‘dealings’ with spiders. I’d sooner not be around them, but I don’t wig out soooo severely when I see one. Well, not as long as it’s outside. I used to kill them on sight no matter. But I made a truce w/them after the breakup w/my chef ex. Lemme ‘splain – my subsequent apartment upon having to move out from ‘our’ apt. had several little webs all around the outside of the door. I didn’t care for that but told them – they are welcome to be there (as there should be a forest where the complex is) – as long as they stay outside and do not get on me. If they ventured inside, there were no guarantees of their safety. I also used them as a life lesson – their webs got nuked by bugs, stuff in the breeze – they just took it down and rebuilt – no worries. So I applied that to my rebuilding the web of ‘me’ after the ex had trashed my web. 🙂

  8. I’m phobic of heights, particularly if there’s a lot of open space around the high place. I like flying, oddly, but it took every ounce of willpower I had to walk over theBloor Viaduct when I lived in Toronto, even though there were way cool things just on the other side. I think if I ever went to the Grand Canyon and got close to the edge, I’d throw up into it, and then probably slump helplessly to the ground.

  9. Spiders.
    I’ve had two very frightening spider encounters, and I am forever effective by them. First, we have to go back to October of 1986. We were having a wonderful “Indian Summer” up in Michigan, the last week of the month. Friends and my friends and I were in my Michigan State U. “subterranean-level” dorm room, head full of mushrooms and hash. I was just about merged with the sofa– a sofa with my face. My hair was quite long, we had an oscillating fan in the screen-less window. Every time the fan swung past me, my hair would tickle my neck. I moved my hand to brush my hair back, and felt the pitter-patter of little feet on my hand. It wasn’t the fan, it was an enormous Wolf Spider, come up from the Red Cedar River seeking shelter for the winter. I moved my palm before my face, and immediately sobered up at one look of the size of this thing. Body every bit as big as my pinkie finger, and legs outstretched to each of my fingertips. I shook my hand in shock, and it jumped to my face, legs in my eye. it bit me on the left temple as I tried to smack it. it jumped to my left knee, and three of us all tried to smack it there, smacked each other instead, and the Wolf Spider jumped down to teh brown, tan and grey shag carpet. The top left quarter of my face swelled up so big that I couldn’t see for three days. I refused to sleep in there until the exterminator came.
    The second experience was more long term. The apartment I lived in before buying this house was infested with Brown Recluse Spiders. I mean INFESTED. Open the silverware drawer, there’s a spider, cupboards? They are not reclusive at all. They liked the cats’ litter box– always a couple in or around it. I’d grab a pair of pants, and I had to shake them out because they love to hide in the folds of clothes. Opening trunks and linen chests for those twice a year seasonal change? oh… I had to talk myself into opening stuff like that.
    As I moved out of the apartment, I’d load up the UHaul trailer, light off a spider bomb, and leave it over night with the doors closed. Three years with those fuckers, rolling over on top of one while I was sleeping in bed, put me into a very strange frame of mind, constantly on guard against them. Their bites are pretty bad. I treated the bites with a paste of Tea Tree oil and baking soda, and changed it twice a day– after going to the doctor for a steroid shot, and some antibiotic.
    Don’t try to show me your pet Tarantula– I will kill it in your hand, whilst hyperventilating in fear. Outside, in the gardens, I’m OK with spiders on their turf. In my house, in my eyesight… I can’t abide not killing it. I get freaked if I miss it, and it gets to refuge. I’ll stake it out all night, tear the room up, if need be, with a big book, a stout magazine, and a bottle of Formula 409 (wicked good spider and wasp killer). It cleans while you fixate. 🙂
    –mf

  10. Claustrophobia. I don’t even want people standing too close to me, and do NOT expect me to ride in a car without cracking the window, regardless of the outside temp.

  11. love to fly. hate not being able to see out while flying. go figure.
    not scared of heights if they’re sufficient: airplane crash *will* kill me. Fall from a ladder? maybe not, therefore … much worse.

  12. Spiders, though not to the extend of Monkeyfister. In fact, because I am scared of them, I refuse to kill them. Somehow, doing that is too close to those who scream “kill the brown skins!” because they are afraid of them.

  13. Second Adrastos’ rodent nomination. Don’t like ’em at all. Saw a mouse in the kitchen a few years ago on Christmas Eve (or The Night Before Christmas)–a creature WAS stirring. Went out to the only open store at midnight, Walgreens, to pick up traps and peanut butter.
    Made ‘adopt a new cat’ a priority. Mission Accomplished with Tigger.
    In my old (well, middle) age, I’ve become mildly claustrophobic and/or agoraphobic. I can deal with crowds, provided I’m not in the middle of one. Look for me on the periphery during Jazz Fest.

  14. I’m weirder than usual – I totally love bats, am not afraid of mice or even rats, and actually like most bugs, vermin, snakes, etc. They’re all cool, with the Major. Exception. Of. Waterbugs.
    Waterbugs (a/k/a American Cockroaches, a/k/a Palmetto Bugs down south) make me freaking insane. Never mind that they don’t bite and I know they are harmless; never mind that I know the smaller roaches are much dirtier and worse disease-vectors. There’s something about waterbugs that just drive me apeshit.
    I am not all that cool with heights; it depends on how high, and how wide/solid/trustworthy my standing platform is. Must say, I used to love heights, so maybe it’s getting older and no longer trusting my sense of balance.
    All that being said, anything that might make a human adopt a kitty is a good thing, so bravo to Michael!

  16. Manmade heights. I become convinced that the secret syncronicity of the world will decree engineering failure at the moment I arrive at the highest point. When I worked in Manhattan and lived in Brooklyn, the subway on the Manhattan bridge was a daily trial. You can see through the tracks.
    Snakes, moose, archnids, goats. Do not laugh at goats – little insane f’ers with horns. When I was growing up, we had a goat that hated people getting out of cars. So when you went to the grocery store and came home, the first thing you did when exiting the car was catch the goat that would come barrelling out of nowhere to butt you. The easiest way to catch it was to have nerves of steel and grab its horns as it charged you.
    Why was the goat in the yard? Little f’ers can jump when they want to. Goat matadors.

  19. Late to the party again. Sigh…
    Sharks. There’s a reason I live in Colorado, and it isn’t the pretty mountains. That’s just a pleasant side-effect.
    The Discovery Channel is my nemesis. They can’t just keep their Shark Week to themselves, oh, no, they have to frakkin’ advertise it on every other channel.

  20. I heard an anthropologist on NPR years ago say that most people have a brain-stem level fear of either spiders or snakes, but not both.
    I’ve always loved snakes (thanks in part to the fact that my 2nd grade teacher’s Dad was legendary herpetologist Ross Allen, who brought all sorts of elapids and vipers to our class). But spiders have scared the shit out of me since I was a kid – particularly the dessert-plate-sized hairy brown monsters that used to come indoors en masse whenever we had one of our Florida summer afternoon frogstranglers.
    Having a son has cured me somewhat: his fascination with all things creepy crawly has made me a bit less arachnophobic, but only if they’re smaller than a quarter and hairless. Anything eight-legged that’s not tiny and bald has me backing up down the hall and hollering for hubby…
    (The giant cockroaches & palmetto bugs that I grew up with in Florida are a close second, but that was pure disgust rather than fear. Thankfully, they haven’t been able to make the Pacific Northwest home – yet.)

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