a phobia that starts with spiders and ends with stars
My mum used to run an intensive care unit and one of her colleagues had an intense and irrational spider fear. A child's drawing of a spider would send her mental, itsy and bitsy would send her mental. Full thrashing uncontrolled mental. A little bit of a loose canon to have in a critical care situation.

They would share a car to work sometimes with fun and games like her trying to climb out of the passenger seat and over my mum while she drove, at speed, to escape a spiders web on the wing mirror.

Anyway, she had once seen a spider, or something spider like, on the path to her front door. So irrationally had taken the decision to avoid the path in future by routinely climbing through the hedge and using her neighbour's path. Thats the irrational half of 'intense and irrational'.

One morning she does just that, through the hedge, down the path, over the road..... but as she's crossing the road glimpses a little passenger on her skirt that she picked up in the hedge. She stops in traffic and begins to scream and scream and scream.

Nearby some guys are fixing the road when they hear and see the spectacle. Not knowing what could have happened, concerned, one guy approaches and tries to help, asking whats wrong, are you alright - no response other than blind, rooted-to-the-spot panic and screams - scanning the surroundings - has she been attacked? are you hurt?- she's beyond reason and continues to scream, unresponsive to any help, defense or support he can offer. He's ready and willing to rescue her, but from what? At a loss for anything else to do to help he grabs her shoulders and tries to shake her out of it.



Its at this point that her husband, hearing the screams, comes to investigate and the first thing he sees is some burley bloke shaking his screaming, petrified wife.


The next thing the kind, helpful, burley bloke sees is stars
(lankygingerfool, Thu 10 Apr 2008, 21:18, Reply)