I have a confession to make. I am deathly afraid of snakes. But then again, there are only five kinds of snakes I don’t like: big, small, alive, dead, and fake. Oh, wait, I guess that covers the whole spectrum. And yes, worms are included. Forget what you learned in biology class; if anything has no legs and slithers, it passes the Julie Feldman Test for creatures that should forever be banished from the face of this earth.

So many childhood memories contribute to this deep-seated phobia. My brother trapping a garter snake inside a ziplock bag and continuously flicking it towards my face. My brother grabbing my hand and forcing it to pet his roommate’s boa constrictor. My brother telling me about the long black and red snake that the housekeeper had found.. right before our bed-time. My brother killing a six-foot-long black snake in the garage. My brother leaving a fake snake coiled up inside my bedsheets.

Oh wait. I think I’m beginning to see the connection…
Granted, I’m not afraid of much. Bugs? Dirt? Please. I can sleep outside with the worst of them. Heights? I’ve gone skydiving. It’s all in your mind, really. People with those fears are rather irrational, if you ask me. But people like and love snakes also are irrational!

They tell you the best cure for phobias is heads-on confrontation. Learn everything you can about those seemingly harmless creatures. Expose yourself to pictures repeatedly untill you can view them casually without getting agitated. Put yourself in the same room with the nasty locked up inside a cage. Progessive steps like that.

Problem is? I’ve already done all of that. I know all the snake allegories out there. And they only make my phobia even worse. Why, I very nearly left my husband last week when he casually mentioned the snake skin still stored somewhere among our basement boxes. Apparently, some camp counselor had given him a “perfect peeling”… and he had kept it ever since. It is still in our house!!!!

So has anybody heard about this movie, Snakes on a Plane? Apparently, passengers on some plane are terrorized by a crate full of snakes let loose. Should I force myself to watch this movie? No captions needed; it’s all obviously there in the action. I was going to post a movie poster here, but already I’m too nervous to type in “snake movie” in the Google Image Search field. You’ll just have to do it yourself. Apparently, this movie already has several cults in the making- and it’s not even been released yet!!! That goes to show you how crazy some people are. And yours truly *is* clearly excluded from this group. At least, please tell me that’s the case!