Day 2 - 3 fears

April challenge
Day 2 - Describe 3 legitimate fears you have and explain how they became fears.

Alright, Day 2. This is where it gets hard. Now I actually have to write down my thoughts. Yesterday while Jonathan was looking over the list of writing prompts for the month he mentioned today's and wondered aloud what was meant by a legitimate fear. Most fears that people talk about are irrational fears, not legitimate. (Ex: Standing in the middle of a very busy highway and being scared you might get hit is a legitimate fear. Being afraid of all birds is a irrational fear.) So, since I think the creator of this challenge really meant irrational fears, I'm going to go with that. Plus, I can't think of any legitimate fears I have at the moment (since I'm not currently standing in the middle of a very busy highway).

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So, here are my three most major fears.

Fear #1: Blood tests
You might have picked up on this yesterday after reading Random Fact #2. I have a probably irrational fear of blood tests. The weird thing is, it's not a fear of needles, it's a fear specific to blood tests. You know, those times when nurses poke needles right into your veins? Yep, that's the real issue. Something going into my veins. I have absolutely no problem with shots, but blood tests are a whole different story. And here's the story behind the fear.

Starting when I was about four years old, I had to get a lot of blood tests because some doctors thought I might be anemic or have diabetes. All those blood tests happened just after the dawn of things-I-can-remember. The first blood test I remember (which may be the very first one I had as a child) happened while we were in Hope, BC at Campmeeting one year. I don't know much about the circumstances, but I think my parents took me to the small camp clinic and the people there sent us to the small Hope hospital. At the hospital I was a little worried about what was about to transpire, but still blissfully unaware of the blood test procedures. My parents told me that if I was a good girl they would buy me a Bible at the ABC (Adventist Book Center) once we got back to the campground. I desperately wanted my first very-own Bible and was good as gold, even after the needle slid into my arm. Later that day I walked out of the ABC with a light blue Precious Moments Bible. I still have it. One particularly terrorizing blood test that's emblazoned in my memory happened probably when I was around six. For some reason the nurse or phlebotomist doing the blood test decided to do it in my thumb instead of the inside of my elbow. She pushed a blue square-shaped plastic thing into the fleshy part of my thumb and blood came out. I was horrified, shocked, and furious. It did not feel good. And I never let that happen to me again. The tiny fake-gold ring with the fake-blue jewel I was offered after the procedure did nothing to mollify me. (For a while there I had quite a collection of cheap jewelry sitting in a small keepsakes box on my dresser. I didn't care to wear any of them, but I thought they looked pretty and would peer into the box every now and then to see the spoils I had won with my bright red blood.) So now you know the background of my vein/blood test phobia.

Fear #2: Snakes
I was blessed with a cousin, Jeremy, just a couple years younger than me who loved animals even more than I did. (Actually, I still am blessed with this cousin!) His family lived in Saskatchewan and mine lived in British Columbia, so we didn't get to see each other all that often. But we were still best buds and always had a great time together when our families visited each other or we had family reunions. Our best bud status got even better when both our families moved to Lacombe, Alberta during the summer of 1993. We lived in neighbouring subdivisions and it was only a short bike ride or a little-longer walk to each other's houses. Jere was always interested in one animal or another. And because he was, I was, too. In fact, he's the reason I got into dinosaurs (and learned about my own personal dinosaur, the Allosaurus) during grades three to five. And he was the one who taught me how to correctly hold garter snakes and other non-poisonous breeds that slithered the countryside and how to get the garter snake stink off of your hands after you held them. I remember one specific time when our families had driven up to some oil excavating area around Edmonton for a Sabbath afternoon hike. Jere found a garter snake and we took turns holding it and passing it to our younger siblings. For some reason, this time the snake kind of icked me. But I tried to shove the ick-thoughts away and enjoy the moment. It worked and we enjoyed our "pet" snake until our parents told us it was time to let it go.

Sometime later, when I was in grade four, our class took a field trip to Drumheller (dinosaur central of Alberta's badlands). Before going to the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology (appropriately located on N. Dinosaur Trail) we stopped in at Reptile World. We sat on folding chairs in a room and learned about the reptiles located there. I distinctly remember the man doing the talk saying that there was only one animal in the world he was afraid of. He had us guess what it was. And guess we did. We came up with every scary animal known to man, but the guy just kept shaking his head. Finally he gave us a clue and said that it was on one girl's shirt. We scanned each other's t-shirts and eventually someone guessed the right answer: a cow. I thought it was pretty amusing that he was scared of a cow. I reasoned to myself that I'd be much more scared of a snake than I would a cow. After the talk, the man got one of the baby pythons, named Brittany, out of her cage and wore her around his neck like a scarf. Then he let us touch her and some of the kids even put her around their necks. When it was my turn, I petted her and the man asked if I wanted it around my neck. I said sure and she was placed there. Then I looked down and realized I was in a potentially fatal situation. It was a strange feeling. Then Brittany the Python was removed and placed around someone else's neck, and I toured the Reptile World with my classmates. I remember feeling no fear when looking at the crocodiles, alligators, turtles and other reptiles. But I had the ticklings of fear whenever I observed a snake. That, I think, was the place my fear of snakes was born. But I really have no idea why. I believe that was the last time I ever willingly touched a snake and it was for sure the last time I ever had one hanging off of my neck.

The first snake-related nightmare I can remember happened at a dubious motel in Oregon. My mum and grandma were taking my siblings and me to a Suzuki Music Institute in Santa Rosa, California and we stayed the night in this not-so-great motel (there was broken glass on the bathroom floor). In the middle of the night I woke up terrified from some snake dream and stood up on the bed shrieking to anyone who could hear that there was a snake at the end of the bed. Both my mum and grandma woke up and both showed me the rolled up lump of comforter lying at the end of the bed. But it took a whole lot of work to convince me that it wasn't a boa constrictor or a python creeping up the bed to squeeze me to death. Since then there have been a lot of snake dreams. And I still have them sometimes. Poor Jonathan. He's a light sleeper so he definitely wakes up when I have snake nightmares. I usually ask him to check with his foot to see if there's a snake lurking at the bottom of our bed. There never is. I actually had a snake dream last week. I woke up babbling about puff adders and somewhere in my stream of words I said, "Who even named them puff adders anyway? That's such a dumb name for a snake." before stumbling off to the bathroom. (Note: I'm just realizing right now that these snake dreams and even my entire fear of snakes might have stemmed from one of my mum's camping stories where some of the people she was camping with put a plastic snake in the bottom of either her or another girl's sleeping bag. I must have never gotten over that story. Wow, this is so interesting! Something I might never have connected with my snake fear if not for this writing challenge.) Anyway, so that's probably way more than you ever wanted to know about my fear of snakes, but I'm not going to go back and edit out any of it, because I think it's kind of interesting, especially now that I might have figured out where it all came from. Maybe it will even help to cure it a bit.

Fear #3: Everything
Yes, I did just say everything. Now, mind you, this is not really a current fear, but it was when I was a kid. And since I can't really think of another current mind-numbing fear that I have, I'm going to use this one. So, I was the most fraidy-cat kid I've ever known. I was scared of everything. Strangers, being kidnapped, people breaking into my house, staying in the car by myself (or with siblings) when my mum ran into the store, the dark (those five might all be connected), going to new lessons (swimming, skating, T-ball, gymnastics, music). Yep, I was scared of it all. I have no idea where this might have come from. I guess the part about being scared to go to new lessons might have been because I never knew what they were going to be like beforehand. Usually after the first couple times of the lessons, I was OK going to them. The first few things, though, probably stemmed from my grade one and two teacher. She used to tell us about kidnappers, kids that had been kidnapped, and if there was a kidnapper on the prowl in our city. Looking back, I'm sure there were only a few mentions in the two years I was in her class, but to me then it seemed like she was telling us these things every week. It got so bad that one day I refused to walk to school (and our front window looked out to the school grounds, so we were very close) for fear that I'd be kidnapped on my way. Even though I was frantic and stubborn, I ended up walking to school, only to find that it was a Pro-D (Professional Development - teacher learning) Day and there was no school. I was quite furious, but I'm sure it was a good lesson for me. I also organized groups of classmates at school to practice the getting-away-from-strangers techniques we had learned from our teacher and the many good wholesome movies, like "Winnie the Pooh Strangers," we had watched. This group was split into two during recesses. Half were the kids and half were the kidnappers. The kidnappers tried to kidnap the kids. The kids tried to get away. The top of the monkey bars was the best place to escape from the kidnappers. Anyway, little by little I got less scared of kidnappers. And all the other things. Phew, am I ever glad. Imagine if I was still scared of everything?!

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There you have it. Three of my fears. Sorry if it was long, but I had a lot of fun writing it. See you tomorrow!

*Here's Olivia's fears. And hey, one of hers matches one of mine!