The other night around 3 a.m. I got up to go to the bathroom. As I was leaving, I noticed something on the white tile. I thought that Coco had had an accident. So I grabbed a wad of toilet tissue and my long handled grabber and kind of dropped the tissue over the poop but it was not exactly centered. Then as I watched, the poop developed tiny legs and started crawling away. I picked up the tissue with the grabber and dropped it again and watched as it began moving slowly across the room. I was laughing so hard it was difficult to grab the darn thing and I didn’t want to wake the family. Finally, I got a grip and dropped it into the toilet and flushed. Well, duh, it was a water bug [palmetto bug] so was probably delighted to be in the toilet. I poured a glop of Clorox into the water and closed the lid. At least I’d chlorinated his swimming pool for him. Hope he doesn’t invite his friends!
Dee, my brave daughter, is deathly afraid of palmetto bugs. Once she killed one by placing a copy of GONE WITH THE WIND over it --- then left it there until the next night so her boyfriend could dispose of it. I figured crawling poop would really freak her out.
If FEAR is an expectation of danger or pain and PHOBIA is an abnormal fear, then a lot of what we experience is actually a phobia. Now truly, there is no real danger from a Palmetto bug.
On the other hand, my fear of snakes is a real fear because, even if a snake is non venomous, it is liable to cause me to have a heart attack. At the least, it may cause my water to break and I’m not even pregnant!
I’ve never been wild about flying, although back in the eighties I’d flown several times with my husband and alone when my mother had a stroke. Son Bruce was stationed in Germany and I really wanted to visit him. The thought of flying over the ocean was very scary to me. You understand, I will not even ride a ferris wheel. Well, at someone’s suggestion, I bought a book about THE FEAR OF FLYING, written by a pilot, and found it quite helpful. I just about memorized that book and decided I could do it. I had talked really hard to myself about being brave, having faith etc.
On the lovely spring day of our departure, the plan was to drive Tony’s bank car by the bank and pick up one of his men to drive us on to the Knoxville airport. That way, they could use his car while we were gone. So there we were, double parked in downtown Knoxville, when one of the people from the Trust Dept came out with a stack of papers. Oh, they said, you need to sign your will, just in case, you know… I was highly annoyed but I signed it. Then, my beautiful daughter, who worked at a law firm in the bank building, came down to say good by, and added Mom, would you please let me put your diamond ring in a lockbox til you return? You know, if the plane goes down, the ring will just be in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean! Now I was really annoyed. I said NO - if I go, the ring goes with me! (The ring is made of my engagement ring plus my mothers.) What a sendoff! Actually, I made that long flight four times with no trouble at all.
Young people who have never flown in the old prop planes, don’t know how it feels to have the plane bump and skid. Also, air pockets are fun! Don’t know why but the short flight between Augusta and Atlanta was always the roughest I’d ever flown.
Once, my mother and I met at the Atlanta Airport in order to fly to Myrtle Beach together. A dear friend had died and we wanted to be with the family. I insisted Mother take the seat near the window, as I thought she’d enjoy looking out. Later, she told me she only took the seat because she’d assumed I was as terrified of looking out as she was. Poor little thing, she didn’t know that looking out is one of the joys of flying, to me. She only told me when the plane circled over the ocean and I kept saying, look, look, it’s beautiful! She’d recently flown to Hawaii, so I thought she was OK with flying.
The other day, I asked Dee her greatest fear. Now, she didn’t have time to think it over and if it were me, I’d have a different answer every day—and she might too. At any rate, what she said was she was fearful her children would not be happy. Please understand, these two kids had awfully rough times before Dee brought them home.
After my Tony died, a widow friend insisted I learn to live alone because that way I could develop the self-confidence I would need to continue a good life. I’d never lived alone though I’d spent nights alone when Tony was away on business trips. (Actually, he’d got where he tried to arrange trips where he would fly out early in the am and back home late the same night.) I was 62 years old and I lived in that big five bedroom house in Augusta alone for the next nine years. Of course, my children came home to visit and I always had a dog. I also had lots of close friends and wonderful neighbors. Even with all that, it got lonely. The peace I feel, living here with Dee and the kids, the lack of fear of being alone is indescribable.
Me and two dear friends, Carolyn and Keith, in my home in Augusta.
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