Flint & Steel | Phobias
My Phobia — Worms! I Get the Heebie-Jeebies Just Thinking About Them
A true story of how I developed my terror of creepy crawlies
I am terr-i-fied of worms!
The way they move, their look, everything about worms makes my skin crawl!
There were many stories of worms exiting a child’s bottom during “potty” time or even while sitting in a classroom.
My friend and neighbor came bawling at the top of her lungs one day in the middle of the day, hanging onto the back of her pants where a live worm had made its entrance.
Imagine that, I would have fainted on the street.
But my best friend held onto the back of her pants while she wailed all the way home.
Growing up we ran around and played all day, usually barefoot.
Being barefoot allowed for grounding.
Though it has a darker side.
But some of the dangers of being barefoot in a village in South America can lead to parasitic infections.
Since we share a common space with animals.
To combat that risk, we were given a steady dose of worm and herbal medicines.
Every three months or so, my grandmother would dose us down with “Dewitt's worm pills.”
I will never forget the colors on the bottle. It was yellow at the top, blue at the bottom and images of entangled worms gracing its cover.
The bottle alone had the power to send shivers down my spine.
Its presence invoked true terror deep in my soul.
We would make excuses, try to hide from the quarterly dosing, but grandma was relentless. She would have none of it, it was another rite of passage.
We would overhear the adults speaking of children who had gotten so infested, they had offending helminths exiting from every orifice.
Grandma was determined we would not meet the same fate.
On the chosen Saturday morning, on an empty stomach, the dosing would commence.
And so my phobia began.
The Dewitt's worm pills were housed on the sill over the kitchen door and each day mocked us with the threat of terrors it could unfold.
I never, thank God, saw any worms, but whenever I was compelled to drink the offending mixture, I was afraid to go to the bathroom.
I tried to hold it in, but eventually of course, I would have to go to the bathroom.
It seems I was born afraid of worms.
As a child, I saw them everywhere.
In food, almost every day, I would complain that there were worms in my food, to the everlasting chagrin of the adults.
Of course, there were no worms in the food, everyone else ate the same food.
To this day, I hate to look at worms.
I love fishing, but I will never touch them to place them on a hook.
When I was a kid, I would “beg” my sister to bait my hook for me.
It was pathetic.
To this day, I remain as afraid of worms as I have always been.
I know there are ways to desensitize oneself and conquer a phobia.
Unfortunately for me, that is not a phobia I even plan to try to overcome because even as I type this I can feel my skin crawling.
I am generally okay with their presence so long as I don't have to see them or touch the poor creatures.
This post was inspired by a prompt from Flint & Steel Publication.
Pene Hodge is a mom, a nurse, a writer. She writes because she must. She loves people and is committed to sharing and gleaning knowledge for the betterment of all.