The Deeps

Okay, not "the deeps," as in Bradbury's "The Foghorn"; more as in "Let's grab a geocache down in a big honking drain pipe!" For me — Damned Rodan, geocacher — such places are commonplace settings these days, so I'm really glad I'm not utterly freaked out by giant freaking rat bastard hairy ugly vile beastly monster man-eating spiders... at least, not the way I used to be, or some caches I would just put on my ignore list (and really, most caches I consider very good friends of mine). Yesterday, I found myself underground again — not far — but absolutely surrounded by these big old Wolf Spiders. There was a time — even as recently as a three or four years ago — I would have been utterly paralyzed with terror. I shit you not, pee-in-your-pants, speaking-in-weird-obscene-tongues horrified scared. I suspect it all goes back to the time that, as a five-year-old, there or about, I was playing under the back porch at home, and a grandaddy longlegs the size of Sheboygan dropped down on me and started prancing about. I was, I must tell you, unenthused. To the point of screaming bloody murder unenthused. Ever since then, arachnophobia has been a very real, very intense issue for me. As I've come to find over the years, though, geocaching is handy as hell for conquering old fears. Hang around with giant freaking rat bastard hairy ugly vile beastly monster man-eating spiders long enough, and you kind of begin to take them in stride. (Mind you, hopefully not too much in stride.)

Anyway, if you have phobias you'd like to undo... my advice is to take up geocaching and go after a few challenging hides. Then make a habit of it.

It works for acrophobia, too. More on that one later.