When I was telling Stephanie about my really neat trip to the Museum of Appalachia (just 15 minutes away from campus)-- she shuddered and re-expressed through nervous laughs how it was at the Museum of Appalachia that she first developed her fear of old things.
I've always known that Stephanie has had this fear of "old things"-- a fear that she has voiced almost since day one of my meeting her; but I never fully understood before now the extent and origins of this strong aversion.
She was on a classroom feildtrip sometime in elementary school. Everyone was watching a reinactment of old-fashioned surgery.
"It was really real," Stephanie said, "The bed pan and the leeches and the blood." She started throwing up everywhere and her dad had to come, calm her down, and take her home.
"So now youre freaked out by old medical practices?" I tried to clarify.
"No." she said. Apparantly it was the setting of the place that reminds her of the instruments and body fluids that frighten her. Artifacts hanging on walls, things one finds in an attic-- these are the causes of unease for Stephanie: the backdrop of the fateful day.
"I couldnt go inside a Ruby Tuesdays or a Friday's for years," she said.
It is worth noting that in addition to "old things," Stephanie is also afraid of "old things on fire," "fire," and "Russians."
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