Types of Abilities

[tamnonlinear]

I have a definite tendency to switch words around in sentences. So I'll say "Can you pass me the television for the remote?" or "Where is the cat that the toy was playing with?". Fortunately I tend to realize that it sounds weird when I'm saying it, so I can stop and restart the sentence, but it's a little irritating. I don't do it much, but more often  than other folks seem to (though that may be a matter of what I pay attention to, since our own faults loom larger in our minds than those of others).

[Emma Bull]

"Where is the cat that the toy was playing with?"

The cat will tell you that's the way the sentence is supposed to be constructed.

Especially if the toy in question did not start life as a cat toy. *g*

[tamnonlinear]

The cat will tell you that's the way the sentence is supposed to be constructed.

Especially if the toy in question did not start life as a cat toy. *g*

Everything in life is a cat toy, sooner or later.

In the last few days I've rescued a iridescent wasp and an earwig from the house on the basis of disagreement about them being cat toys. It occurred to me that these were both critters I was scared of as a kid. These days it's just a matter of whether or not this is an appropriate cat toy.

In both cases I had to explain to some disappointed cats that the toy was gone and not coming back to play.

[VCorvidae]

The cat will tell you that's the way the sentence is supposed to be constructed.

Especially if the toy in question did not start life as a cat toy. *g*

Everything in life is a cat toy, sooner or later.

In the last few days I've rescued a iridescent wasp and an earwig from the house on the basis of disagreement about them being cat toys. It occurred to me that these were both critters I was scared of as a kid. These days it's just a matter of whether or not this is an appropriate cat toy.

In both cases I had to explain to some disappointed cats that the toy was gone and not coming back to play.

We had to do that with a mouse, back before we moved. But first we had to get the mouse awy from the cats. The house we used to live in had a central staircase, and you could walk all the way around it (from the front door into the living room, into the hall, into the kitchen, into the dining room and back to the front door).

Let me tell you, three cats plus one mouse plus central staircase equal chaos central. My hubby and I sat on the steps and LAUGHED our heads off.

[kayjayoh]

In the last few days I've rescued a iridescent wasp and an earwig from the house

GAH!!!!


<runs and hides>

GAH!!!

Both must die. The wasp I would kill with caution and the earwig with extreme prejudice. Diediediedie!!

<shudder>

[tamnonlinear]

Awww. They weren't doing any harm. They just blundered into the house while a door was open, and they were happier outside. I caught them safely and released them, without harm to any of the involved parties.

I really don't mean to trigger any phobias, but I stopped being afraid of spiders as a kid after I noticed how beautiful they are. After that, I was too busy observing them to be afraid.

The wasp was truly a beautiful blue-green jewel, iridescent and lovely.

And while an earwig isn't a particularly pretty creature, they have very beautiful wing structures, like silk origami, that are really quite stunning.

They were innocent. It would have been cruel to kill them.

Just offering this in case it helps. I find it's harder to be scared of something once you can see it as something to be understood.

(I reserve the right to continue to squish silverfish though. I still find them creepy and they hurt my books.)

[Elizabeth Bear]

I have a bug rescue-and-release policy, except for spiders, which are welcome to live in my house and eat flies, and flies/maggots/roaches/silverfish/mosquitoes/ticks etc., which are squished. If the pitcher plants don't get 'em first. I love my pitcher plants.

But wasps and bees get ushered outside.

[postholedigger]

Spiders are expected to understand that they may come in the house so long as they do not walk on the ceiling over the bed...

[CJ]

I have an extreme wasp (and other flying stinging things) phobia.  Fortunately, rather than being the scream and run type, I just freeze. 

I don't like spiders near me (or on me) except Daddy Longlegs, which I think are just plain cool.  My husband has a stronger spider phobia (mostly of the squash it NOW variety).  We also have a cat named Spider.  Named for her propensity to climb all over and crawl around in the basement, emerging covered in spiderweb.  "There's a Spider in the bathtub!" has gone from a panic button to an in joke in our house.  Spider also seems to like killing (or playing with) spiders.  In confrontations between the four-legged and eight-legged, the four-legged Spider usually wins!

[nebula]

I have a bug rescue-and-release policy, except for spiders, which are welcome to live in my house and eat flies, and flies/maggots/roaches/silverfish/mosquitoes/ticks etc., which are squished. If the pitcher plants don't get 'em first. I love my pitcher plants.

But wasps and bees get ushered outside.

Hee - I like the idea of them being "ushered". I try to catch-and-release where possible, but big long legged beasties do give me the shudders and I have had to go and sit down after dealing with them. I did used to have a spider catcher - a perspex pyramid on the end of a stick that had a sliding door. Unfortunately, my son was using it (with great enthusiasm) as a sword and it broke.

My other spider catcher is quite useful, but yet always seems to be at work when the very scary hairy ones appear. I have coped but not willingly.

Our cat plays with frogs, which squeal piteously and have to be picked up and replaced in the pond.

[mocknot]

I try to live and let live with almost everything except house centipedes. Those get killed. I was bit by one on my leg, while in bed, a couple years ago and it was worse than any other bug bite or sting I've ever had. Welts the size of my palm that itched so badly they were almost painful, for days. So yeah, I'm not willing to share space with anything that does that.

I'm also not a fan of ticks, but those aren't likely to be inside.

[kayjayoh]

I really don't mean to trigger any phobias, but I stopped being afraid of spiders as a kid after I noticed how beautiful they are. After that, I was too busy observing them to be afraid

See now, spiders I don't mind. In fact, I welcome them. Box elder bugs and moths are generally tolerated and ignored. But earwigs are on my kill on sight list, as are centipedes and silver fish.

[million-to-one]

I cohabit quite peacefully with my spiders, although I draw the line at sharing the shower with the beasties. I do have a full-on phobia of wasps/bees though. I used to just be scared of them, but then I tried to cure myself of it by going into a beehive with a beekeeper...
Yeah. Bad idea. They were crawling all over my suit and ohmigod... Now whenever I see them I can feel their little legs and...gah. GAH. 
*shudder*

[Mattador]

Centipedes are the only creature on my kill list, as I long ago resolved that silverfish were invincible and could move at hypersonic speeds, and I therefore wasn't going to waste my time trying for them.

Centipedes, on the other hand... we used to have a lot of very hairy, shag-caret-looking nasties in the apartments I lived in through high school, and they freaked me out.

Once, as I was getting out of the shower, I looked down and saw one almost at my feet- a solid two and a half inches long, and nearly an inch broad, counting the fringe of legs.  Being startled, naked, and unarmed, it was all the more terrifying- so I screamed, leaped up on the stool, ripped the towel rack out of the wall, and flailed until it was an unrecognizable peanut-butter-colored smear.

It was a formative experience.

[AndrewJ]

Jim, that's aphasia. *g* I have the noun version, where I forget the words for things. That and apraxia-of-speech (different from generalized apraxia, which is a loss of motor control) both afflict me a little.

They especially show up in a homophone or similar-word thing I do, which can be really hysterical. ("19" flat-panel minotaur" was probably my best one, though at WisCon I substituted "epistemology" for "epidemiology" in a sentence related to the WisCholera, and cracked up my entire lunch party...)

Tell one a lot about how the brain stores language, it does.

Nice to know that I'm in good company!

So substituting one word for another is a kind of aphasia? Huh. Nine times out of ten, when I try to say, "Cute Overload", it comes out as, "Cute Overlord". I try not to think too hard about what that implies about how my mind works.