Are you afraid of the dark?
9:19 PM Posted In fears , National Geographic Edit This 3 Comments »
Much to my mother's dismay, but taking strongly after my father, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Whether jumping off of bridges on Martha's Vineyard, cliffs in Hawaii, or hopefully someday jumping out of a plane, I love to push the limits of my fear. (That also explains my love for scary movies, although unfortunately most don't scare me anymore.) I started noticing my tendency to scare myself for fun when I was a kid: my favorite movies that I always begged my mom to rent at VideoPlus were Planet of the Apes and Edward Scissorhands. 
I also had nightmares about the Ring Wraiths in the Lord of the Rings, but was still totally fascinated by them... because I was a cool kid and read those books in elementary school. Yeaah. Around this same time with the weird Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies and books (I think it was a period between 7 and 9 years old) I also really liked to look at books about spiders in the library, because I was really afraid of them. Most kids are scared of things and avoid them at all costs... I would flip open to the page of the meanest, biggest, hairiest spider in the book and stare at it. Then proceed to have nightmares. I'm really admitting to some weirdness here. Either way, I was totally fascinated by these weird, crazy, scary spiders! Now I'm not afraid of much... I'm really only afraid of things that are poisonous. Hence, some spiders still put the fear of God in me, though not the kind you find around the house. To get to the point, I was looking at National Geographic today at some of the new species that scientists have discovered in Papua New Guinea (where all the good beasties are) and I found this awesome jumping spider:
It's almost beautiful, isn't it? Its body sparkles and shimmers like it's been made out of plastic recycled from princess jewelry! So I was enjoying how innocuous this spidey seems to me, when I scrolled to the second jumping spider they found:
This one scares me! It stirs emotion deep in my bowels, even though it's a 2-dimensional picture on my computer screen. The spiders are probably both harmless, and come from the same family (because they're both jumping spiders, or something) but it still makes me nervous just to look at the picture. So which one do you think I'll be spending more time looking at tonight?
I also had nightmares about the Ring Wraiths in the Lord of the Rings, but was still totally fascinated by them... because I was a cool kid and read those books in elementary school. Yeaah. Around this same time with the weird Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies and books (I think it was a period between 7 and 9 years old) I also really liked to look at books about spiders in the library, because I was really afraid of them. Most kids are scared of things and avoid them at all costs... I would flip open to the page of the meanest, biggest, hairiest spider in the book and stare at it. Then proceed to have nightmares. I'm really admitting to some weirdness here. Either way, I was totally fascinated by these weird, crazy, scary spiders! Now I'm not afraid of much... I'm really only afraid of things that are poisonous. Hence, some spiders still put the fear of God in me, though not the kind you find around the house. To get to the point, I was looking at National Geographic today at some of the new species that scientists have discovered in Papua New Guinea (where all the good beasties are) and I found this awesome jumping spider:
It's almost beautiful, isn't it? Its body sparkles and shimmers like it's been made out of plastic recycled from princess jewelry! So I was enjoying how innocuous this spidey seems to me, when I scrolled to the second jumping spider they found:
This one scares me! It stirs emotion deep in my bowels, even though it's a 2-dimensional picture on my computer screen. The spiders are probably both harmless, and come from the same family (because they're both jumping spiders, or something) but it still makes me nervous just to look at the picture. So which one do you think I'll be spending more time looking at tonight?
3 comments:
What if the sparkly one and the furry, yucky one mated? Also, your title reminded me of the Nickelodeon series by the same name. Since you were a thrill-seeking kid, I'm sure you watched it. Man, that show really freaked me out.
Oh, I definitely watched that show. Looooved it. Let's not talk about spiders mating.
Ew. ew. ew. ew. ew. I am a perfectly logical, independent, but spiders do something to my psyche.
What's the only think worse than the fear of God? The fear of spiders ):
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