I am currently in the process of teaching a unit on "Wishes and Nightmares" for my summer school students. While I was helping a student with her thesis statement, I got to thinking about phobias.

I reflected on the short stories "Poison" by Roald Dahl and "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. Both stories deal with phobias of common "nouns" in the world. Dahl's story is about a fear of poisonous snakes, whereas du Maurier's story is about a fear of birds that have suddenly decided to attack the whole of England. Here in the desert, snakes and birds are quite common. If people want to survive without having a heart attack each day, they really need to overcome their phobias. I will give you a personal example.

Before moving to Tucson, I lived in Northern California. When I was a child, I was terrified of spiders. Who am I kidding? I still am! I remember seeing a spider slightly larger than the tip of a pin. I screamed for my dad who took care of the creature for me. Once I was safe from the frightful beast, he calmly informed me that when we moved to Tucson, there would be more spiders and they would be larger. I had big eyes as a child, and I imagine that they bugged out a lot when he told me. I remember thinking that I wouldn't last. Little did I know what I would encounter. As a child in the desert, I talked my dog into killing spiders for me. He was territorial and thought of it as a game, especially since he got a treat afterwards. Once when I was staying with friends in central Arizona, there was a Daddy Long Legs spider in the shower. It didn't move, so I shut my mouth and took a very fast shower--with a spider in it. When I was in high school, I house-sat frequently. Two summers in a row I had to vacuum up a wolf spider, which are the most disgusting spiders I have ever seen. I still had to call my dad, who patiently stayed on the phone with me for one hour while I cried, until I finished the job. If my childhood self knew about the types of spiders she would encounter and how she would deal with them, she would have laughed in my face or she would have asked to live with her Grandmother and forsake the family instead.

Fear. It is a primitive emotion to guard us against animals, plants, and other dangerous objects so we can live another day. However, my fear of spiders had nothing to do with surviving. I simply thought they were ugly. There are a few poisonous spiders in the desert, but they really are no match against a vacuum cleaner or poison that you can spray at them. Reflecting on this, I realized that I should not be afraid of spiders because they cannot harm me. Yes, my dad has told me this many times, but it takes a while to truly understand messages at times. I also realized that, though I still greatly dislike spiders, I have a coping mechanism and I can somewhat coexist with them--as long as they're not in my house.

Logic tells me that I should not be afraid of spiders and my experience confirms it. Through the years, I have been able to deal with larger spiders in scarier situations and live to tell the tale. Although I would not invite a spider to dinner, I no longer believe that I have a phobia. Perhaps this was one of the messages that Dahl and du Maurier was trying to reveal: we are not actually afraid of common objects, but we are averse or dislike being around disturbing ones. However, modern phobias really have nothing to do with primitive fear.