Everybody is afraid of something. For me, my biggest fear is probably bees. I’ve mentioned this briefly before on this blog, but perhaps it deserves a bit of a fleshing out. Bees scare the shit out of me. I don’t know which ones sting and which ones don’t and it doesn’t matter – if a bee comes anywhere near me, I am SO out of there. I will run, gyrate, jump, yell……whatever. I’m not kidding. Ask Steph. Whenever there’s a bee nearby, I can’t really focus on anything. I’ll just keep asking her “is it on me?” or “is it still near me?” or “where is it?”

So where does this come from? Well, since I grew up in a very wooded area, we were always out exploring the woods and walking through them to get to friends houses, etc. It also meant ample opportunity to pick blueberries in the summer. So occasionally we’d grab some pails and just go out and pick blueberries for what seemed like hours. One day I spotted a bush FULL of blueberries and walked up to it and started filling up the pail. I was probably 9 or 10 years old. All of a sudden, I was covered in swarming wasps. I had inadvertantly stepped on one of their nests and this apprantly made them very angry. Hell, if someone stepped on my house, I’d be pretty pissed off, too, I suppose. Anyway, I remember it like it was 10 minutes ago. I ran screaming bloody murder down a hill towards home and it must have taken my parents a good amount of time to get me calmed down. The final tally was around 30 stings, all over my body. In my shirt. In my pants. Everywhere. Not good times – bad times.

To this day, I haven’t been stung by a bee since and whenever I see one, it’s probably pure comedy to people who see my reaction, but for me it’s survival. People say you should conquer your fear by doing what you’re afraid of. But when you’re afraid of bees, I don’t agree. At all.

What’s your biggest fear?