When I was four years old, I developed a phobia of the toilet. This was caused by a moment when my four year old tiny body somehow created enough excrement to block my beautiful home toilet. To my horror the water started rising higher and higher to the point where I thought I was going to flood my entire house.  The trauma from this incident made my four year old mind incapable of flushing the toilet. That created a bit of a problem in my house as my brother followed my ways and started to not flush either. I was beginning to lead a revolution to return to the middle ages in my house.

Eventually, the monumental fear of the toilet passed until I could flush as long as my parents were somewhere nearby to stop the flooding in my house in case things went awry. However, I was struck like a thunder with a brand new shock of terror. I found out that there were snakes in my backyard, and I became paranoid that a giant rattlesnake was going to hide in the toilet ready to pounce on me and bite my butt off in one large chomp. The combination of these two fears led me to shrivel quite a bit in my formative years, it’s probably why I’m so short. 

This led to my hovering phase. From the word hovering alone, I think you can paint a picture of how I protected myself from the mysterious and elusive toilet snake. By the time this phase concluded, my triceps were cut, man. Another method I used was double checking: I would check the bowl at least three times before sitting on my porcelain throne. I would also knock on the outside of the bowl to make sure the snakes knew I was there, and I wouldn’t surprise them because I was a very considerate and courteous four year old. 

This practice worked and I have yet to be bitten by a toilet snake. The snake fear developed into a cockroach fear. My old house had lots of cockroaches, it seemed to be especially welcoming to the ones with wings. This created a nightmare of mine where I would wake up with flashes of cockroaches flying out of the toilet bowl as if I had just hatched them. At four years old, I was going to be a mother to a bunch of evil butt cockroaches .
Although my fear has subsided, and I am no longer paranoid about using the bathroom, anytime the water starts rising, I get the flashbacks.