Fears passed down

With our vacation to Niagara Falls coming up in a few weeks, I've kind of had to come out of the closet about my fear of big, tall things (but I'm not afraid of heights!). I am afraid of Niagara Falls and even just looking at pictures on websites while researching gives me the willies. When we were deciding on a destination, I had this fascination with Niagara Falls as a "must see" kind of place (haven't seen it since I was a child) and looked at is as an opportunity to face my fear as an adult.

So I was trying to figure out where this fear came from and I had an inkling of an answer last weekend: my mom! When I told her that I was actually kind of afraid of seeing the falls, she said sympathetically, "Yeah, and don't go on that boat at the bottom of the falls. Ooo, that's just too much!"

Another thing I don't like is bugs. So of course the other night while giving Tobey a bath, I see a spider on the shower curtain, one with really long legs (the body was the size of a pea but the legs extended 5-6 inches across!). I called Tom in urgently and he rushed in, thinking Tobey threw up in the bath. When I point out the spider he rolls his eyeballs and tries to kill it, only to have it scurry on the floor. I scream and jump up onto the edge of the bathtub. Then he says it's on me and after verifying that he wasn't joking, I shake my leg and brush off my clothes. He finally got it, flushed it down the toilet and I realize that I might have possibly just made Tobey scared of spiders. I don't know if it's related but now when he comes out of the bath, he thinks there will be an ant coming and needs a lot of assurance before laying down to have his diaper changed.

So now I'm thinking that maybe my mom and I share this fear of big, tall things. And maybe Tobey and I will share a fear of bugs.