When I was growing up overseas, I was taught to be afraid of snakes. We lived in countries where there were varieties of poisonous snake, with names like two-step snakes, pythons, and King Cobras. When I was first told about the dangers of a two-step snake I remember rationalizing that I would stand still if bit, then I wouldn’t die. My sister calmly explained that I would die by the time I could have taken two steps.
This was not an irrational fear that was imbedded; we lived on the jungle parameter and the military would frequently burn the edge of the perimeter to drive the snake back into the jungle. Funny thing about snakes… they don’t have the best sense of direction and this burning back for safety would sometimes drive them into our house. I survived living in the Philippines without incident. However, Japan was a different story.
When we moved to Japan, we were never warned about snakes and always thought life was grand. Every Saturday we would go to the river with a bunch of my father’s friend, and our dog Babette. Babette was a standard poodle, a standard is usually a good size dog, but still as neurotic as any poodle you could imagine.
We one Saturday my sister and I walked across a little water bridge to the other side of the river. We were exploring the side of the river where we never went. The grownups were all drunk, as usual, and we were running wild, as usual. As my sister and I headed up a road and half way up a large black snake reared up and started chasing us down the road. Terrified my sister jumped into the river, as did the dog, and I. There was one little problem with this plan… I did not swim. No really, I did not learn to swim until I was 13 and my father had a pool put in our backyard.
So there I was in the river with my sister who was about eleven or twelve at the time, and a large poodle. Funny thing about fear… I learned to dog paddle really quickly. One of my father’s drunken friends saw me struggling and jumped into to hinder my flight from one large black snake. Hell I didn’t know if this snake swam or not, all that was running though my mind was two-step snake, two stroke snake…
That was back in the early sixties… today I am a strong swimmer, I cannot stand poodles, but I am still terrified of snake.
