Trauma

Warning: snake story. I appreciate it when I'm given fair warning. I'm still traumatized from the time I was flipping TV channels and inadvertently saw a snake coming up out of someone's toilet on the screen. It was years before I stopped jumping up at the slightest breeze, especially in the middle of the night.

Anyway, I can't remember how old I was when the following happened, but I was probably 10 or 12. My mother found a snake in the yard and decided that I needed some aversion therapy. I was up in my room when she called me. From the top of the stairs, I could see her at the bottom, holding up a two or three-foot snake by the neck, its body twisting and turning.

"Come down here and touch it," she said. "I want you to see that it's not slimy."

"Gah!" I cried. "Just take it outside!"

I either won and my mother took it outside, or my mother won, I touched the snake and then repressed the memory. I honestly can't remember anything beyond the image of my mother at the bottom of the stairs, holding that snake by the neck, its body twisting and turning, twisting and turning, twisting and turning.