Passing on those irrational fears (this is a long story)

Its a well known fact that I am completely terrified of spiders to the point that I may need therapy. Its a little less known that I am also afraid of bees and monkeys, but nowhere close to the extent of the spiders. Monkeys are creepy because of their humanish faces and bees are just scary, but I don't lose it over either of them. I try to avoid contact with bees, and just cringe at monkeys. Spiders I cry over, have nightmares about, can't even go in a room where a spider is residing, I avoid looking at spiders at the zoo, I can't see them on tv without getting the willies, its rediculous. Well I'm no longer alone in my rediculous phobia, Corbin has joined in on the craziness, only his fear is with the bees.

Over the last few weeks a wasps nest (I assume, I don't really know the difference between bees and wasps) has developed on the under side of our bbq grill. The grill is right next to our sliding door, so we see zillions (thats right zillions) of bees (or wasps) come and go to that nest all day. As I mentioned semi-recently, Corbin was stung by a bee a few weeks ago, but I didn't mention that Dex was stung just a couple of days ago. It has been getting a little out of hand. Last week we went out to bbq up some dinner, and Scott had to move the grill a little, and that made the bees mad. Corbin was out there with Scott and the bees surrounded him. I said (through the screen door, I was in the house because of the bees), "You better watch out Corbin, the bees are going crazy." I thought it was an innocent remark and that he would just move, but instead he started screaming and flailing about. This didn't make the bees happy, just more angry. In the midst of the chaos I opened the door, grabbed his hand and pulled him in the house. By this time he was inconsolible. He was crying and screaming and genuinely terrified. He was convinced they had stung his ears (which they hadn't, just flown close to them, possibly touching them). He didn't stop crying for a good twenty minutes. It was really sad because I knew exactly how he felt. Well in order to avoid this same situation happening again, Scott tried to knock down the wasp nest with a pipe, then he ran like the wind. He succeeded in getting a chunk to come off, but quite a bit still remained, and it basically just made the bees very angry! We didn't go in the backyard for 2 days.

Anyway, today the bug people came back, and I made them spray the nest and kill the bees. Corbin was so happy to see those dead bee bodies on the ground. I set up the little pool at the bottom of the slide, convinced corbin that the bees were gone, and finally got him to come out and play for a while. After about an hour or so, he decided he was done and went back in the house. Dex and I stayed outside, he played, I read. After maybe 3 minutes I could hear Corbin screaming like crazy. I couldn't tell what he was saying, I could only make out screams. I ran inside fearing he had gone in the kitchen with his wet feet, slipped on the tile floor and broken a bone. I found him cowering in the corner by the fridge crying. He said there was a bee inside. I looked all over our house for that bee.......didn't find anything but flies. I calmed him down after a while and tried to tell him that maybe it was just a fly. He said that he was sure it was a bee and that it must have turned invisible to hide from me, so it could sting him when I wasn't watching. Poor kid! I feel so bad to have fueled his fear. Dex getting stung, me staying in the house to be away, and Scott running to get away all added to it. How could he not be afraid? Maybe the two of us should go to therapy together! I really hope they are gone for good this time.