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Yeah, I've been leery of the dark most of my life, and downright afraid of it when I was a kid. It bothers me less and less as I get older, but I still don't like being outside on foot after dark very much.
But my biggest phobia (as opposed to fear) is a terror of vines that came from two incidents in my childhood that resulted in long-term nightmares.
1) When I was little, the house we lived in in Southern California had a great deal of Baltic ivy (the kind with the really enormous leaves) in the front yard. My father used to whack it back with a weedeater to keep under control, and recruited me to help with the raking that resulted. You would not believe all the creepy stuff that lives/grows in big matted beds of ivy. Not to mention the fact that, as it turns out, I'm allergic to ivy. It gives me the same sort of rash poison ivy (no relation to the real stuff) gives regular people. When my mother figured it out, I was no longer asked to rake ivy. I was extremely grateful.
2) When I was a teenager, the house we lived in in Northern California had some English ivy (the kind with the small leaves) out front. One day I walked into the living room to discover that a sprig of it had somehow managed to grow under the siding, through the insulation, and come out through one of the electric sockets. It only grew about six inches into the room before it died, but I cannot describe how much that creeped me out. I had nightmares for weeks about long shoots of ivy growing into the house and strangling me. I'm shuddering just thinking about it.
This is why, when I drove across the U.S. South many years later as an adult, I spent a lot of time shuddering at the kudzu. And why I can't prune my own clematis [wry g]. I've tried. I just can't.
Yeah, I've been leery of the dark most of my life, and downright afraid of it when I was a kid. It bothers me less and less as I get older, but I still don't like being outside on foot after dark very much.
But my biggest phobia (as opposed to fear) is a terror of vines that came from two incidents in my childhood that resulted in long-term nightmares.
1) When I was little, the house we lived in in Southern California had a great deal of Baltic ivy (the kind with the really enormous leaves) in the front yard. My father used to whack it back with a weedeater to keep under control, and recruited me to help with the raking that resulted. You would not believe all the creepy stuff that lives/grows in big matted beds of ivy. Not to mention the fact that, as it turns out, I'm allergic to ivy. It gives me the same sort of rash poison ivy (no relation to the real stuff) gives regular people. When my mother figured it out, I was no longer asked to rake ivy. I was extremely grateful.
2) When I was a teenager, the house we lived in in Northern California had some English ivy (the kind with the small leaves) out front. One day I walked into the living room to discover that a sprig of it had somehow managed to grow under the siding, through the insulation, and come out through one of the electric sockets. It only grew about six inches into the room before it died, but I cannot describe how much that creeped me out. I had nightmares for weeks about long shoots of ivy growing into the house and strangling me. I'm shuddering just thinking about it.
This is why, when I drove across the U.S. South many years later as an adult, I spent a lot of time shuddering at the kudzu. And why I can't prune my own clematis [wry g]. I've tried. I just can't.
