EEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!!!!

May 7 blog challenge topic - The thing(s) you are most afraid of.

I don't usually think of myself as being fearful but this assignment is bringing a whole list of phobias to mind - I am afraid of tornados, (but not of swimming in a thunderstorm). I am afraid of having a stroke, and I am afraid of being audited by the IRS not because of having done anything wrong, but just because they are mean). But none of those can match my 2 biggest fears.

This would be a tie between cockroach/palmetto bugs and being stuck in a car underwater.

Apparently the term "palmetto bug" is a euphemism for the large American cockroaches that populate the south. They are large, winged and unafraid of you.  They think nothing of flying into your face or running across your leg, foot, whatever.  Gross, I feel nauseated just thinking about them.  From May through October I am in fear whenever I open a closet, a kitchen drawar or the dishwasher or even just enter a room or the porch in the evening.  I am not a sissy.  I am not scared of bats, mice or snakes, but let me tell you there is something about a palmetto bug that evokes a gut response in me like nothing else.  I don't know why I have such a fear of them.  When I was young, about 9 or 10 and before I had ever seen one before we drove past a billboard that must have been for an exterminator, and it had a giant picture of a cockroach on it.  I had such a visceral reaction I even got shaky!  I could not get that picture out of my mind for days.  I guess I was born with that fear.

I don't know when I started being afraid of being stuck in a car underwater.  On my drives between NC and NH I have encountered some pretty amazing bridges and some pretty awful weather.  Crossing the Alligator River in high winds, crossing the Nice River in an ice storm, crossing the Woodrow Wilson bridge as it was falling apart right before being rebuilt, and crossing the Tappen Zee bridge pretty much anytime are all pretty scary. But sometime in there I started having this fear of going off the bridge and being stuck underwater.  Maybe it was when they started making cars have power windows.  Will they open underwater??  I tend to doubt it.  This means I would have to be calm enough to wait until enough water is inside my car to be able to open the door.  And to make it worse, now I am imagining driving a car and having a palmetto bug run across my legs making me drive off the bridge!

It might be time for me to get a moped.