h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Heh... speaking of knowing the difference between harmless and dangerous spiders, this meme was posted on reddit the other day and I found it hilarious and spot on.

http://i.imgur.com/DRUlrCg.jpg

I'm not afraid of mice, but when I see four of them in my wastebasket I throw them out the door as fast as I can.

Hey SashaQ, I was scared of Daleks too - even though bough they couldn't climb stairs! Spiders too - wouldn't go past one on the stairs.
Hated earwigs & Daddylonglegs too. I still dislike earwigs but have got over the other fears...

My fear now is declining health in old age.

Are you still able to climb stairs?

My main fear, and this is not a childhood one but one which has become stronger since I had children, is of heights. Now - heights are a sensible fear. If you fall from a height, it could do more damage than looking at, or even eating, a spider. But not a childhood fear, oh no - I would probably have given my mother the screaming abdabs with my tree-climbing and balancing along the top of the climbing apparatus in the playground at my primary school.

Ah, fear of earwigs is a good one - when I was a child someone told me the old chestnut that earwigs go in your ears when you're sleeping, so I had nightmares about them... I'm not keen on them now, because of the way they move, too, but I'm not half as frightened since I found out that the old chestnut isn't true...

Fear of heights is another interesting one, I think - my fear manifests as an inner voice that says eg 'if I lean on the safety barrier around a high platform, gravity will pull on me in such a way that I'll somehow fly over the barrier to fall down', so I'm not sure it is entirely sensible... I don't mind standing on a glass floor inside a high tower, though, but my mum's inner voice says if she does that the glass will turn out not to exist and she'll fall down so she can't do that.

Yes, that unpredictability is the key. I don't particularly like spiders, but love crane flies, which are very easy to track and catch.

I'm afraid that old chestnuts will crawl into my ears while I'm asleep.

I have that same feeling about heights. It's OK if I'm behind glass, but I hate open places high up, cliffside paths etc.

Another one I recall is being a car passenger when going up a hill - I was always worried we'd start slipping backwards. Perhaps that's not so irrational?

It's not irrational at all. When my father was 92, he would drive the two of us to a nursing home to see my mother. He insisted he could drive, but I was still a little nervous. Nowadays I drive and he's a passenger, so it's *his* turn to worry. .