Say “Boo!”

What are you afraid of?

I used to be scared of the lions under my bed. I knew they were there, just waiting for me to lower a toe or show them a nose. All they needed was a claw-hold and I was dinner. There was this little voice in my head that insisted that there was a whole pride of very large, sharp-toothed felines with a ravenous taste for nubile female flesh lurking on the cool marble floor. My logic and wide-awake intelligence told me there was nothing under the pale wood base I laid my weary self on every night. At some pragmatic level, I knew there was no hide nor hair of anything under my bed – after all, our maid was pretty efficient and swept even the smallest dustball or feather out. But I was too scared to look…

Something else that gives me the heebie-jeebies is a spider. Even the smallest and most innocuous of the eight-legged creatures takes on the proportions of an Aragog, the monstrous arachnid guarding the Chamber of Secrets that Harry Potter and his friends fought so dramatically. While I cringe at the little creatures scuttling over the glass of my window, I squeak and recoil in horror when I see them actually inside, their beady little eyes seeming to glare malevolently at me as their pinhead brains coldly calculate just how long it would take to ingest and digest my vast self…

And then there are butterflies. Those pretty, fragile, vivid insects that flutter so insouciantly through our bougainvillea and settle ever so briefly on a leaf to show off their bright wings and distinct Pucci-like patterns. They have always terrified me. Irrational? Totally, but with some logic to the fear. Swat at a butterfly and it is very likely to swing away and avoid you. But if you make contact, you will most probably injure it. Which means it will need to be killed, or else you will have to go through the trauma of watching it slowly die, its beautiful wings that you had admired just a few moments ago gradually stilling and dulling into death…

My mother was horrendously afraid of cockroaches. She would shriek dreadfully, leap out of her chair and flee to safety, which could be many rooms away or even out of the house or restaurant we happened to be in. And this seems to be genetic, since I, too, am not exactly enamoured by the disgusting creatures, though my revulsion is not all fear. One unforgettable afternoon, Mama and I stood at the far end of the living-dining area of our apartment, flinging every shoe and slipper we could find, including some of Papa’s, across at a rather large cockroach that strolled around near the curtains draping the French doors to the balcony. About half an hour and our entire stock of footwear lay heaped at that end of the flat. The cockroach lay on its back some distance away. When Papa came home, he wondered, “Did this die of boredom or old age? Because nothing has hit it!”

But there are lots of creepies and crawlies that I am not afraid of. Take ladybugs, those pretty little round insects that have a nursery rhyme that is all theirs. Or beetles, some of which can be very colourful and interestingly patterned. And snakes, their scales gleaming like textured silk. Or wildcats, with their gorgeous, fiercely angry eyes. Ah, if only mankind could be so casually talked of!