Three fears and how I got them...

The other night as I was sitting at my desk typing a spider decided to slowly make his way from the ceiling to my desk on a single thread right in front of my face. EW! I hate spiders. I hate all creepy crawly things, actually. And that got me to thinking about what else I was afraid of and why. Turns out that I have what I will refer to as My Big Three. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Spiders and bugs in general - I know exactly how this fear came to be. I was a little kid living with my family above my Dad's bar. I got a new bed and I was so excited about it. It wasn't really new. It was a hand me down from a neighbor but it was new to me and it was HUGE! I lay in the middle of this great big comfy bed covered by mounds of blankets and started to drift off by the slight warm glow of the light coming from the kitchen. I was just about asleep when, not one but TWO spiders suddenly dropped from the ceiling, landing directly on my face. My mother came running to the sounds of the blood curdling screams coming from my bedroom. If that wasn't enough to make me terrified of crawly things I had another skin crawling incident just a couple of weeks later. This time I was walking home in the evening, just after that measure of time for all kids back then - the street light went on, time to go home - and I was just passing the side entrance to my Dad's bar. Over the side entrance there was some kind of beer sign which was usual in those days. As I passed underneath something dropped onto the top of my head with a slight thud. It felt like an acorn or a pebble but it didn't roll off, it stayed there. I reached up to see what the heck it was and discovered a large, prehistoric looking June bug stuck in my hair. From a distance what happened next probably looked like either a very creative interpretive dance or like I was having a seizure. The screaming only added intrigue, I'm sure. Since then I can honestly say that I not only fear insects, I hate them with a passion. As an adult, I haven't become one of those squeamish run out of the room types when a bug gets in the house. Though I do admit, if Alex is around he's the chief insect remover in our family. If I'm alone, I get a sort of Special Ops resolve to my demeanor and that room is not big enough for the bug and me. One of us is leaving - dead. I have been known to turn over furniture in an effort to find a spider that got away because, frankly, my fear of the spider itself is no match for my fear of knowing that there's a live one in the house - somewhere - just waiting for the right time to scare the crap outta me! 
2. Clowns - Now, I'm not exactly sure where my fear of clowns came from. I'd like to think it was when I read "It" by Stephen King but that was actually written much later than the manifestation of my fear. There is just something inherently creepy about the whole idea of the clown. When I was a kid, I was a big Bozo the Clown fan. Well, I like the show, anyway. But even back then when I watch Bozo, Cookie and that super creepy Whizzo I couldn't stop myself from thinking they were all drunks and probably killers in real life. Even nice clowns like the one Jimmy Stewart played in "The Greatest Show on Earth" have a deep dark past. He supposedly killed his wife. I just don't trust clowns. "It" just confirmed what I always knew. Clowns are evil. One time, just for something to do, a friend and I took a drive to Delevan, WI - about an hour from here - and went to the Clown Museum. It was full of old clown photos and costumes. They were dusty and sweat stained and worn and it was the most frightening place I'd ever been. I started to think, "What happens if we get locked in here?" OMG - I would die. One summer I went camping at Devil's Lake near the Wisconsin Dells. We went to Baraboo, just near the Dells to the Circus World Museum. Ew....again...dusty, sweat stained...frightening. And then, for crap's sake, they had a real circus with real clowns that my sister made me sit through. Good lord, when the clowns came out it took every bit of my will power not to run screaming from the tent. Remember that scene in "Poltergeist" where the little boy can't sleep because of the storm and the lightening keeps lighting up that scary clown doll and then all of a sudden the doll is under his bed trying to drag the kid underneath? Yeah...never trust a clown. 
3. Strangers - I'm a pretty rational human being most of the time and I love meeting new people so me being afraid of strangers is kind of weird. I mean, everyone is a stranger before you know who they are. But, again when I was a kid in school at St. George Elementary, the good School Sisters of Notre Dame thought it would be good to teach us "Stranger Danger". In other words, they felt it necessary to show us film reels of small children being abducted from their parents and later found dead. Yes, they showed us this! I think I was 7 or 8 years old and, let me tell you, it scared the bejeezus out of me! I would have a similar feeling years later when my driver's ed teacher showed films of actual accidents with the dead people still lying in the wreckage with their limbs hanging off or their head gone! Sheesh! So at 7 or 8, anyone I didn't know became the object of instant suspicion. I was sure that everyone that was passing me on the street was going to grab my hand and pack me into the trunk of their car. Years later, I actually had something like this happen! I was an adult living in Chicago. I was walking to work at the theatre in broad daylight, on one of the busiest streets in Chicago. When I passed the entrance to a building a man reached out and grabbed my arm and attempted to pull me into the building. This ass hat was not ready for the commotion I was about to cause. Neither were the other people on the street! But it worked. I scared him off and got their attention and the police were called. He got away though which was too bad. Apparently he didn't even live in the building and he took off running when I started yelling. 

I sometimes think it's funny to know that I have these fears because I love scary movies and love to be scared. I guess the difference is that I like to be scared on my own terms. That's one reason I hate Haunted Houses at Halloween time. I can't control what happens in there. At a scary movie, I can choose not to look. But I can't control the creep crawly, clown, strangers of the world and that's why these three things scare me to death!