On Apr 19, 2006, at 16:14, Jeanette Fischer wrote:
She said this fear of spiders is transmitted from mothers to children but in my experience men are much more wary of spiders than women!!
I wonder about that "transmission of fear chain" claim... I suspect that revulsion to spiders is as common as revulsion to snakes, and that it "comes naturally" (ie instinctively and irrationally) to the majority of people, irrespective of parental teaching.
Both of my parents used to kill spiders, same as they killed all bugs and other vermin which invaded their domain -- house and garden. And some which didn't, but happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong moment.
I've always been reluctant to kill anything "just because", and do it only in self-defense (I'm severely allergic to bee, wasp, etc stings, and kill all such on sight, without asking pardon or origin). Used to drive my father *wild*, when I'd spot him killing something non-threatening and hum a Polish song, the text of which was (more or less): "a peasant won't pardon a live thing, a peasant won't pardon a live thing; when a live thing happens to cross his path, it won't live long, for sure". I remove (vacuum cleaner) old spider webs, but that's it; I ignore small spiders which scuttle here and there, and keep hoping I'll never see a really big and hairy one, because those *do* make me squirm.
My son, from the time he could speak would yell: "mama, come and kill this" ("this" being a spider, ant, whatever) and watched, bewildered, as I hunted up a piece of paper, scooped up the whatever, and evacuated it outside (where it'd probably die, but that wasn't my concern. I expect that Judas had his excuses ready too <g>)...
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
