In Focus

Everyone has something they are afraid of.

Personally, I am not a fan of spiders. People think this is odd considering my love for all things associated with Halloween and I love horror movies. If I see a spider in my house, before the cats do, it will die. Even touching a spider web sends chills up my spine. No thank you!

There is some kind of furry brown spider that likes to make a nest in the window sill of my kitchen window every year. It’s a creepy tunnel of white and I don’t want to see what’s down there. This window does not have a screen and I made the mistake once of opening it to clean the window. The creepy spider ran out of its tunnel and right at me. I threatened it with fire, well, a long lighter, and it ran back outside the window. I would gladly burn my window before letting that thing in my house! Stay outside or die.

I don’t mind heights, but I hate ladders. I feel like I have nothing to hold onto and it makes me a little light-headed. Decorating the house for the light show is a lot of fun in that aspect. The small ladder is fine, but our big ladder, good luck forcing me to climb to the top. It’s not happening. I know I’m not alone with these fears.

My mom on the other hand has a unique fear. I can’t say I’ve known anyone else with this particular fear. She hates bridges. She has no problem with heights. She has no issues using the big ladder as I do. But bridges are a whole other story. It doesn’t matter how long or high they are, she dislikes them all.

We would often cross the Oakland Bridge in California on our way to visit relatives. It is a high, long bridge, but not quite as big as the Golden Gate Bridge. She would stick her head out the window and chain smoke until we had crossed the bridge. It was a hilarious sight. I mean, I can understand the fear of the bridge being so high up or so long. But, that doesn’t matter to her.

We, along with some of my friends, were coming back from a trip to the zoo in Little Falls and we ended up stopped on the short bridge over the river in town due to a train. Mom was driving. She put the car in park, got out, and walked to the end of the bridge. The rest of us were laughing hysterically at the event. I had to crawl into the driver’s seat and drive the car to the end of the street to pick her up. The kicker was neither I nor my friends had our driver’s licenses yet. We may have had our permits, but I don’t totally recall.

Road trips are fun. If she’s driving and sees a bridge coming up, she pulls over and makes me drive while she white-knuckle death grips the door. When the 35W bridge collapsed in 2007 she said that was exactly why she didn’t like bridges. They can fall.

Mom has gotten better. She does cross the bridges at the 210 and 71 intersection with no issues. But big bridges are still a “no” in her book.

I guess we all have our limits...