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Under wraps...
Kept well-hidden throughout my 29-year teaching career in elementary education under one of the cardinal classroom rules: “Never let them see you sweat!” Or else, risk exploitation at one’s own peril.
OPHIOPHOBIA—an abnormal fear of snakes.
Off the charts since knee-high to a grasshopper, I can’t even look at pictures of them without “recoiling” in horror.
Maintaining the façade of fearless leader in the third-grade trenches, I feigned wide-eyed interest whenever any student showed me photos of snakes in books pertaining to that s-s-s-ubject.
Granting permission from time to time for students to bring in a pet for show-and-tell, I’d peer at the snake inside a terrarium, faking delight over its presence in Room 105.
There’d be no resting on my laurels, nor end to mopping the sweat off my brow when no one was looking. One year I had the pleasure of teaching the son of a former high school friend, who happened to volunteer her time at Rhode Island’s renowned Roger Williams Park Zoo. By and by, she contacted me about making arrangements for a herpetologist to set up a “visiting zoo” for all three third-grade classrooms.
Once again, I pretended to be over the moon with enthusiasm over a dreaded prospect.
The day of:
Toward the conclusion of an informative, interesting, and well-organized session, the herpetologist removed a guest python from a glass tank. The cold-blooded critter wrapped around its handler in a hug.
Show time!
The herpetologist invited our students to form a line if they wanted to pet her. At first, many were either shy or reluctant to do so. Not one to squander a tactile learning experience, yours truly put on a show of false bravado by volunteering to go first. The overture worked in enticing every student to pet the python.
No longer on the clock, so to speak, since I retired seventeen years ago, I declined stepping inside the Reptile House at Roger Williams Park Zoo during a recent trip there with my grandnephew.
To this day, I prefer to shun snakes rather than molt my phobia of them.
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enjoyed the read
I will admit that snakes, molts, books about them, were always high on the interest list of my many classes of First Graders.
living in rural Oklahoma as we do I am happy Rosie the loooong corn snake hunts in our pasture for small critters who might want to come into the house.
never stop writing
m
Thanks for sharing.
Have a blessed week.
Perhaps you had a very early experience with snakes that you don't even remember. That's why even with education and a steeled determination not to let your fear influence your students that enabled you to be, "first in line…" to pet the python. Cool, with a little sweat underneath. I would probably feel that way if I was crawling in a very narrow cave and came face to face with a viper about 6 inches ahead of me with no way to back out quickly.
Ron