Bugs are not my problem. But there is something that does bug me and its far bigger than a bug! So Bugsy Malone move over, Mickey the Mouse is what makes the hair on my neck stand at attention and then some. And I'm not talking the lovable Mickey Mouse of Walt Disney World. Its Mickey THE Mouse, Algernon, or Ben that scares me!
I too, shared a much better experience with mice when I was younger than I do now. In college, for my undergraduate degree in Psychology, I had to train mice and rats to move through a maze, eat when a light blinked and many other "menial" tasks. I handled them three times a week for an hour. Believe it or not, I talked goofily to them. Quite honestly, I am not sure whether my fear is a developed fear like yours or if there is some part of my brain that believes I treated these mice and rats "inhumanely" and there is guilt that now manifests itself in the form of fear. Maybe all those mice told their family what I was doing to them daily and the stories have been handed down through generations of mice and they are coming to "get" me!
All kidding aside, I really believe that it was having to handle them under uncomfortable circumstances that somehow led me to my fear, though I will throw something out there. My father has a fear of mice and rats. He however, lived in the projects when he was growing up and some of the fodder that he and his friends would create was to try and hit the rats with stones. They were rather effective in their efforts and he would tell you that they killed quite a huge number of them. And my father, your grandfather has a fear of bugs as well. In fact, he hates bugs so much that he wanted to be buried in a mausoleum instead of the ground so the bugs wouldn't eat him. (Something I find incredibly funny because after all he would be dead so what difference does it make?) My sister Pam would run over anyone in her way to get away from a bug. Could you be afraid because it bugs your grandfather or aunt the same way it bugs you? I would say there is some credence to that except Kaitie is the bravest bug and mouse girl I know. The majority of the time she doesn't go all-girly when it comes to disposing them dead or alive so that negates my generational theory at least as far as we are concerned. Unless of course, Kaitie is more Ring than Bence! She does overwhelmingly resemble the Ring side of the family and you are more Bence than Ring. But there was that time at the lake the Bence side showed up in Kaitie and she did fall off the jet ski when that bug came near her. That incident alone could corroborate my theory.
This analysis of our problem has made me run through a maze like I used to make those rats run through mine. And like the rat mazes of my youth, there isn't a prize at the end that will solve either of our issues. So the real question is, "Are we really afraid? Or are our fears developed by the notions of someone else?" I move that we put that question out there like the age-old which came first the chicken or the egg. Either way it is answered, mice will bother me and clearly, bugs are what's bugging you!
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