Rants & Raves of Jasmine’s Fiction

This morning as I was stepping into my shower I felt my foot contact crush something slightly crunchy, slightly squishy and very decidedly disgusting.  Immediately, a phrase from an Indiana Jones movie (which I’ve watched in the triple digits) came to mind.  It was when Dr. Jones and his sidekick ShortRound were checking out the tunnel and the little boy commented, “Feels like stepping on fortune cookie.”

Now to check out what kind of ‘fortune cookie’ would be in my shower so early in the morning.  Look down.  Eewwww.  Green fluid.  My guess is a roach.  Pick up foot.  Brown crunchy mess with sticky green fluid.  Well.  It WAS a roach.  Hmm, note to self.  Must call pest control.

Yes I remained calm.  I have no fear of roaches. I know they are disgusting and I HATE the ones that fly.  But y’know, I was on my way to shower and its dead so there was no real ickyness factor that soap and hot water couldn’t fix.  Then I thought of my friend Jamie who FREAKS out every time she sees one of these things scuttling across the ground at a dirty eatery.  LOL.

This brought me to think about everyone’s phobia of creepy crawlies.  I remember my days at Outward Bound School – its one of those character building, teamwork focused, outdoor summer camps for spoilt urban teenagers to get a chance to rough it in the jungle for a couple of weeks. 

I had a teammate who was one of those ‘princesses’ – completely and thoroughly pampered with flushing toilets, hot running water, air-conditioning, chauffeur-driven limousines and fully catered meals.  The shock of actually COOKING your own meals by campfire in the JUNGLE, sleeping on hard muddy ground and only a tiny, icy stream for washing up and literally needing to go bushwalking to answer your call of the wild with a hand spade and 4 bay leaves…  She was NOT prepared.  And she was NOT prepared for the INSECTS that one encounters in the wild.

Mosquitoes, flies, beetles, centipedes, snails, leeches, and the WORST of the lot: ANTS.  She was terrified of ants.  Might I now mention that the deeper into the jungle you go, the larger the insects get.  And as Murphy’s law goes; What Thou Fearest The Most Shalt Come Hither To Torment Thee.

So after a long trek through the wilderness with our brave & fearless trailblazer (i.e. me) hacking away at the overgrown jungle with her machete, we decided to camp for the evening.   Picking a clear(er) spot amongst the trees, we set up tents and gathered wood & water for campfire and cooking/cleaning.  Knowing that the princess would be too much in trauma after the 6 hour hike, we set her to lay out the food rations next to the campfire.

Then all of us were DEAFENED by her SCREAMING her fool head off.  Racing back to the campsite thinking maybe a herd of warthogs invaded – we arrived to find her…

Wait for it…

Dancing around with her shorts around her ankles, arms flailing about her like she was being attacked by killer bees and screaming at the top of her lungs like a banshee, “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”  (And yes, she was wearing WHITE tennis shorts and heeled sandals to trek in the JUNGLE.  Brilliant I tell ya.)

My first though was “OMG, spirit possession.  We need an exorcist. ”

Then I realised that she was screaming because there was an ant on her thigh and she was too freaked out to touch it to brush it off BUT she did somehow managed to get her shorts off WITHOUT touching said insect.

WOW.  It took 3 of us to pin her down so we could get the damn ant off her leg.  After that, she cried for an hour straight, complaining about how mean her parents were to send her through such a horrible experience etc. 

Sigh.  Don’t even get me started on the incident with the leech.  Just don’t.  I haven’t the energy.

—

The other amusing person with a phobia I have to say is my sister and her indescribable fear of lizards.  She’s terrified of them reptiles beyond logic, beyond justification and beyond fear.  Honest.  And she blames me.  MUaHahAhAHAhahaAHAHA!

Story goes back to when she was a wee lassie and I told her that the lizards that hung out in the bathroom were going to eat her toes when she’s brushing her teeth or taking a shower and when she finally looks down at her feet she’ll find half a foot missing and she quite literally took that to heart.

She will very deliberately (at lightning speed mind you) move to the opposite end of the room if she were to spy a lizard crawling up the wall.  She would rather walk in the pouring rain in the middle of the road than to shelter in the awning covered pavement if she spies lizards crawling on said awning – lest the reptiles drops on her or something.  Her greatest fear is to put her feet in her shoes one fine morning only to find that lizards have taken shelter in her footwear and she has unceremoniously squished them with her bare toes.  I can see the years of therapy she’ll need to erase that.

I will never forget the time after a visit to our grandmother we hit a long traffic light.  My sister was driving.  We had the windows down and next to the road on the driver’s side was a giant monsoon drain.  Next thing we know…  An IGUANA (I fucking kid you not - it was a 4 foot iguana) crawls out of the drain and starts waddling towards the car.

I was naturally fascinated by the creature but that quickly turned into an exercise of retaining the use of my eardrums as my sister started shrieking as the massive reptile flicked it forked tongue out at her. 

Locking the doors, winding up the windows and unbuckling the seatbelt was done in that order before she started crawling onto my passenger seat (with me still in it) to put as much distance as she could between the iguana and herself.  Nevermind that she was encased in a metal vehicle, nevermind that the iguana could not possibly smash the windows with its tongue and swallow her whole like she believes, and nevermind that iguanas are vegetarian…

She likes to say that she doesn’t remember the episode as her brain has happily blocked that traumatising event.  I still make fun of her though.

As for me, well.  I’m fearless.  Especially when it’s a do or die situation that involves US$25,000.00.  I’ll eat just about any insect out there.  On a normal day however – you keep your damn spiders away from me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Gripes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.