things that scare me

One of the signs of spring is that first wasp you get inside the house. This one relentlessly traversed the front window for more than an hour, searching for a way back to the great outdoors. I followed it for as long as I dared with my macro lens only half an inch away, fearing I might touch the little animal and provoke it. It really creeped me out when it tilted its head and looked directly into the glass. That's when I had to walk away.

I'm not sure why wasps spook me. I don't remember seeing any of those black & white monster movies of the 50s with a wasp. Ants, yeah. Spiders, oooh, and how. But no wasps. I don't think I'd ever really seen a wasp until my family moved to Dallas when I was eleven years old. There were so many creepy crawlers in Texas that I never imagined really existed I was always getting freaked out by something or another. The wasps seemed so ominous, slowly circling with their back legs dangling beneath them; you never knew who they were after. My younger brother, too, was particularly frightened, and to this day he will duck and flee the presence of such a monster.

I got over most of my fears of wasps after I realized they were mostly non-aggressive.

Until I read "The Shining", that is. In a few visceral paragraphs, Stephen King undid years of good sense. You wanna be scared of wasps? and a few other things? Read this book.