Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Scoliodentosaurophobia

Do you have a fear that is absurd, bizarre, and completely unreasonable? Do you realize that this fear is absolutely ridiculous but the fear remains nonetheless?


I do.


When I was little I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house. It was my favorite place to be. Most weekends I would end up spending the night in the play room at the back of the house. The play room had a TV, and the TV had cable – something I didn’t have at home. I would spend many of those nights parked in the old recliner, in front of the TV watching ‘Nick at Night’. I love Lucy, Pete and Pete, The Wonder Years and Bewitched were some favorites… then came Are You Afraid of the Dark.


I wasn’t exceptionally courageous as a kid (in fact, I was pretty much a scaredy cat) and I usually changed the channel as soon as it came on. I don’t know what got into me, but a few times, I sunk down in my chair, wrapped up tight in a blanket and decided to brave my way through it – I’ve been paying for it ever since.


(At this point you may think I am being dramatic, sadly, it’s all true)


You see, on one of these nights that I decided to test my nerves, the episode happened to be “The Tale of the Chameleons” (cue creepy music) Lucky for me, and this story, I was able to find the description of this episode online:


“Invasion of the Body Snatchers-esque story of a reckless girl who doesn't heed the warning of getting bitten by a chameleon and gets turned into one by a chameleon who disguises herself as a human as part of a plan to unleash her species on the world.”



Terrifying, right? Well it was to me when I was six and ever since then I have been terrified of lizards. Big, small, skinny, fat, nice, mean, green, brown, lizards that walk or lizards that swim (sick!) they all freak me out like no other.


Benson thinks it’s funny.


It doesn’t help that Benson’s brother (Tanner) LOVES lizards (big lizards) and not only has them as pets, but brings them to family functions. It also doesn’t help that we have geckos that live in the outer walls of our house.


(Typing that makes me cringe)


I could tell a large handful of stories right now about horrifying run-ins I have had with these disgusting creatures (finding one crawling around inside my parent’s house, stepping on a dead one, finding three {THREE} dead ones in an antique jug I bought {WHY?!} and having Tanner’s lizard charge me causing me to fall out of a chair in fear and just about break my wrist) but for now I’ll stick to the most recent one, which has been haunting my thoughts for the last 14 hours.


You all know about our re-model. The lacquer we’re using to re-finish the cabinets has a very strong chemical smell that has filled our house this past weekend. Luckily the weather has been nice lately and we were able to open our windows up to air the house out and enjoy the pleasant breeze at the same time. Saturday evening when we were getting ready for bed and as I glanced out our open window the following things hit me all at once:


1. Its night time
2. Geckos come out at night time.
3. The aforementioned geckos like to park it on our bedroom window at night.
4. Our bedroom window is open
5. Our bedroom window does not have a screen
6. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!


I kept myself from screaming out loud (Benson hates screaming) and managed to semi-calmly tell Benson that we should close the windows IMMEDIATELY so the geckos don’t attack me in my sleep. He laughed of course and told me to not worry about it because a) since it’s gotten cooler the geckos aren’t coming out and b) if we close the windows the fumes from the lacquer will probably kill us. It took a little “self talk” but I believed him, calmed down, forgot about the geckos, went to bed and haven’t thought about it since. That was until about midnight last night when I woke up to go to the bathroom.


Groggily, half asleep and with my eyes partly shut I made my way in the dark over to the bathroom. As I walked into the bathroom I happened to glance over to the window (why? why did I do that?!) and sitting happily on the bathroom window (the outside - thank goodness!!) was one of the home stealer geckos. I did a double take… “No!” I thought “It’s too cold for the geckos, it can’t be a gecko!” I looked again (why did I look again?!) Yes, all the windows were closed that night but, that means that they’re still coming out of their little hideaways at night and that they’re crawling all over MY windows with their disgusting little feet.


WHAT IF ONE GOT IN MY HOUSE ON SATURDAY?! What if it’s hiding out under my bed (or IN my bed) and comes out at night to crawl all over ME?! What if it LAYS EGGS in our house before it shrivels up and dies?! Oh.my.gosh. What do I do? Part of me wants to look for it, while the other part of me doesn’t even want to know if it’s there or not. I have been thinking about this since last night. I couldn’t sleep, every movement or sound made me think one of those little devils was crawling around my room. Each time I dosed off into sleep I imagined millions of its teeny little babies hatching in my house and taking over.


I don’t want to go home.


I think I have to move.


Help me.


Disclaimer: I am aware that I am clinically insane for feeling this way about lizards. I do realize that probably 90% of lizards are completely harmless and those that aren’t live nowhere near my house. I know that I have serious issues.


Please tell me you have some strange fear too.
Share it. You can even make one up. Just make me feel less like a mental case – please!

5 witty remarks:

Kim & Max Willis family said...

HA HA HA!! that reminds me of the time when i was cleaning brinlee's room and a little gecko came out of a hiding spot and scared the crap out of me!! i was so freaked out. your normal....lizards are so gross

Bev said...

I feel your pain. I can't even type or tell you what I'm phobic about. All I can say is I call them "the M word". Ask one of my friends what that means.....I even went into therapy and quit because they wanted me to touch one...nope I'm done. We even moved from an apartment one time because of M words....so, no, you are not crazy...but I am, and proud of it! Us crazies can hang out together!!

Kali said...

OMG!!! I read every word you said and my goodness, I got goosebumps. Just today I was trying to explain my scoliodentosaurophobia to a couple friends and they just didn't get it. We have several in our yard and I think they love my bedroom :( my fear is similar to yours in the sense that it started from a show too--Parent Trap (the disney movie with Lindsey Lohan). There's a scene where her character puts a lizard on her soon to be step-mom's head and it crawls into her mouth. I was never the same after that.

Unknown said...

I SOOO feel your pain! I have a terrible case of scoliodentosaurophobia. I'm only afraid of the small ones, though, like geckos and the other creeps that crawl around on my house. I've honestly cried a couple of times from accidentally getting close to one. The worst lizard experience I've ever had was when my mom and I were in our front lawn, and I happen to look down and see half of a dead baby snake, which I am also afraid of. I don't know why, but I looked closer and found a dead gecko inside of it's mouth. I screamed and my mom came over and picked it up! She then preceded to play with it before she threw it into the bushes. I now see that terrifying snake-lizard in my nightmares.

The Whiz Kid Forte said...

Oh gosh - I can totally relate to you. I live in Florida, where there's not only a lot of lizards, but where my scoliodentosaurophobia originated. I saw one in the bathroom when I was little vacationing in my uncle's house.

Another insult to injury to a scoliodentosaurophobe is the Philippines. The house lizards, aka butiki in Tagalog, are even more scarier than my state. Whereas they are anoles, the ones in the aforementioned nation are geckos. GECKOS. But I'm determined to get over that fear.