DEATH BY LIGHTNING

there are certain things that i dont like. i hate spiders, for example. i also hate mosquitoes with a passion (what a waste of a creation). i dont really like flies either, but mostly because they annoy me. im not fond of heights if i dont have something to hold on to or strap me to (ya know, like a zipline or something). otherwise im ok.

my mother hates spiders too. but she really really hates spiders. she has gotten better about it over the years, but she was phobic for most of her life. it was so bad that she actually had my dad come home from a shift at the emergency room to kill a spider when they were newly weds. ya, that's right--the emergency room! luckily, my dad was only a med student at the time so it wasnt as big a deal, but come on...i had to learn how to kill insects for my mother at a young age. i dont know what she will do when my little brothers move out.

i wouldnt say that i have a phobia of any of those things i listed. i just dont really like them. but i have met some people recently who do have phobias. and i think their fears are rather unusual.

the first is a girl who is afraid of birds. yup. birds. she explained that when she was much younger she was forced to watch alfred hitchcock's "the bird's." she was terrified. years later she tried watching it again in an attempt to overcome her fear. even though she kept telling herself it wasnt real and it was just an old scary movie, it still creeped her out. she says it is mostly crows that scare her (from the movie) but pretty much any bird makes her uneasy.

the other girl i recently met is deathly afraid of lightning. seriously. we went to a fireworks show recently in a small middle-of-nowhere town and there was a lightning storm going on at the same time. she started have panic attacks--muscles tensing up, increased breathing rate/hyperventilation. not fun for her. it was so bad that on the way back to the car (about 1/4 mile away from the show) she closed her eyes, put on sunglasses and held on to my arm and told me not to run her into a pole. i was tempted...actually, even i know that is really mean. you dont mess with people when they are genuinely afraid of something. her story was that when she was little a family friend was actually hit and killed by lightning. ever since she heard that, she has had panic attacks whenever she even hears thunder.