Insinkeratoraphobia

When it comes to irrational fears, I have plenty. I've already admitted to my feelings about spiders and crickets, but there are more fears lying below my strange surface. The most pathetic of which is probably my fear of the garbage disposal.

It has hidden blades, for the love of pity, just waiting to chop my wayward fingers off. There are probably congealed masses of food slithering around the base of those blades, so Lord help the first person who loses something of value down the garbage disposal drain. Being so wary of the disposal, I barely ever run it for fear of hearing some jangling metal down below making it necessary for me to search out the source of the noise.

One time right after Lauren was born, though, I did indeed hear jangling. So I stopped using the machine at all for several days - being such a fraidy-cat, I couldn't imagine myself trying to fix it, and being the mother of a newborn, I forgot to mention it to Justin. I was making dinner with my sister-in-law, Emily (the most beautiful lady in the world) one night when she tried to run the disposal without knowing there was a problem.

See what I mean? Gorgeous Emily.

CLANGALANGAPAPPAPCLAKclak...clak...click. Emily looked me with apologetic eyes as I tried to explain what had been going on and that it wasn't her fault. I looked with dismay down into the depths of the sink and told her that it had been doing that for awhile, and I suspected a piece of razor sharp blade was bent or broken into a dangerous mangled DEATH trap.

She said, "Have you reached your hand down in there?" Since Emily's a nurse, I understood that she was watching out for my safety, and wouldn't have wanted me to take undue risk in a dangerous situation. I mean, what if when you touched the blades, they'd kick-start themselves and chop away at my unprotected hand?

"NO!" I said. "AbsoLUTEly not! I would never..."

And then I watched with horror as she folded her graceful hand into the disposal drain, fiddled around for a second, and withdrew her (still amazingly intact) hand holding a bent up beer bottle cap.

I was speechless. Emily's eyes sparkled with laughter as I struggled to close my gaping mouth. Since that day I've been assured of one thing: not that garbage disposals were nothing to be afraid of, no, that was still firmly entrenched in my mind. The one lesson I came away with was that I'd call Emily if I ever needed a hand to reach down there again. And knowing her as I do, I have no doubt that she'd come help me out while making it seem like she wanted to come over at that exact time anyway - it wouldn't be the tiniest bit of trouble to her. All the while, it would be a gigantic bit of bravery, from my viewpoint.

But now, the stakes have changed. This morning, a BIG GIANT spider was floundering in the bottom of my sink - the disposal side - and all I could manage to do without screaming was spray it's leggy behind down into the disposal. I flipped the switch immediately, hoping those spinning blades would -erm- dispose of the wicked spider post haste.

Those spiders, though - they're tricky. They can curl up into tiny blade-dodging balls, and cling to the sides of slimy surfaces while they dry off. Who knows, it may even have been just about to lay baby spider eggs, and having found a dark, moist space in which to hatch them....

Eewwww.

I wouldn't even ask Emily to reach into a spider pit.