Folks who know me well know I have two irrational fears, one which I have mastered, one which I have not.
The first, mastered fear, is of heights. (Actually it's of falling *from* heights.) (Actually, actually, it's of hitting the ground after falling from heights, but you get the idea).
The second... well, (and remember I said it was *irrational*) it looks like this:
Icthyphobia is my curse. Oddly, I even know why I have this, it involves an act of child abuse on the part of my father when I was about 4 or 5, yet it doesn't make a bit of difference. I have not completely conquered this one. Not yet anyway.
2 comments:
How did I not know this about you? It must be live fish right because I think I remember you eating fish at the Summer Shack.
That clip reminds me of one of my favorite Ernie & Bert clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFTjeaDlxDI
Yes, live fish.
When I was a young boy (4 or 5) my father bought a piranha, which he kept in a tank in the basement. It had a mouth full of nasty teeth and my parents kept telling me not to touch it because it would eat me. This I completely believed as the thing was nasty looking.
At some point I did something, made my father mad and so to punish me, he told me he was going to feed me to the piranha. I screamed and ran, but he caught me and dragged me howling and kicking to the tank. He then grabbed my hand and started to force it into the tank. About then, my mother came running downstairs assuming, I guess, I had gotten my hand caught in the bandsaw or something. She came in, saw my father holding my hand in the tank with the paranha and just lost it.
Somehow I got the lesson that fish would eat me. Later I realized the proper lesson was that my father was a jerk, but it was too late. Anytime I am in water with live fish, I have an instinctive, irrational fear that they are going to consume me.
The cruise ship folks still talk about the one and only time I went snorkling.
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