The Boogie Man and Other Heebie-Jeebies

Pam told us all about her little spider fear, which inspired me to tell you guys of my snake phobia. Even now, just writing the word, I’m looking under my desk, just to make sure.
A couple of years ago, my roommate was showing me pictures of a trip. When we got to one picture, I could tell something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t tell what. A snake! One guy held a snake! I inadvertently threw the laundry bag I had in my hand right at my roommate and leapt over the couch to get as far away as possible in our tiny apartment. Poor Mandy couldn’t figure out what happened.
Evidence B: when Chris and I first started dating, Chris made dinner for me at his house. He had just gotten back from Africa, so this great photo book of Africa sat on his coffee table. I flipped through it while he marinated. Landscape, those small, flat trees, hippos, giraffes, lions, little kitten next to a snake. Chris ran out of the kitchen into the living room when he heard the scream and saw this girl, for whom he was making dinner, standing on his couch and his photo book flying across the room. To this day, the photo book is in hiding.
Why, you may ask, why this fear? I don’t really know, except to tell you one more story: when I was very, very young, I remember my parents taking me to the zoo, which happened quite often. This particular time, though, we went through the reptile house. Big, big mistake. I remember losing track of my parents. A snake in front of me (behind glass, of course, but that didn’t matter), I backed up. Slowly, slowly, one foot behind the other until I bumped into another glass cage. I heard the hiss and turned to see a cobra, fully spread, eye to eye with me, teeth bared.
Okay, enough of these stories. I’m not going to make it through the day, now.
Chris tells me when to shut my eyes and open them in movies and TV. When we walked through this oh-so-romantic garden in Austin, he redirected my path when he spied a Gardner snake. In fact, he said, there were several. How did I not see them? God had pity on me, I think, and blinded me.