It’s hard to imagine your favorite teacher having a life outside of school. It’s even harder to picture them having fears besides getting their grades in on time. But just like the rest of society, teachers are afraid of something. From bugs to beaches, find out what gives some Lake Ridge teachers the chills.

Ms. Long:

“I’m really scared that somebody might kidnap me. Or try to kill me. When I was a kid, I was out riding my bicycle, and a man came running after me. He grabbed something out of his pocket, which looked like it maybe was a knife, and scared me really bad and I screamed. He had said ‘Calm down calm down, I’m not after you!’ but it scared me. In my little kid mind, he was after me. I still kind of think he might have been.”

Mr. Austin:

“When I was a child, I feared vampire bunny rabbits on a cruise ship. I’ve never been on a cruise and that’s because I fear my death from the vampire bunny rabbits on the cruise. The other fear I have is of small, tiny mice. I saw one in my garage, and I didn’t go in there for two years. I’m irrationally afraid of small tiny mice. Some of my students are mice-like with rat qualities. I give those kids F’s.”

Mr. Lee

“One of my fears, is that when I’m sleeping, spiders will crawl into my mouth and I swallow them. There are statistics that, in an average human life, we eat 100,000 spiders before we die. We eat them while we sleep because they fall into our mouth. Also, while I was riding a roller coaster in California at Six Flags Magic Mountain, one of the latches unlocked and I almost fell out.”

Mr. Whickel

“I was playing golf one time, and I played a lot of golf, so I didn’t ride in a golf cart. Instead we would always walk, and there was a giant space between the holes. I took a shortcut and walked through all these weeds, and I kept my head down because there were spiderwebs everywhere. I walked through this giant spider web that cover my whole body and my face, and I was freaking out. When I got to the other end, there was this huge black and yellow spider crawling across my face. I flung it off and some nearby golf cart girl picked it up I it was the size of my hand.”

Ms. Hicks:

“I’m really terrified of spiders. When I was a little kid, I got bit by a Brown Recluse. I actually have part of the muscle in my arm missing, because it eats through the flesh. So when I was taken to the hospital, they had to cut away part of my muscle and now I have this deep fear of spiders. Even if it’s a Daddy Long Leg and I know it’s not dangerous, I’ll still burn the whole house down.”

Mr. Arnold:

“I’m afraid of the ocean. There was one time when I was really young, we were in Galveston Bay out on the beach. There was a lot of seaweed. My parents would tell me ‘It’s just seaweed, no big deal’. So we went out to the water and, all of a sudden, there was a crab on the seaweed. It started running after me, so I ran screaming back to the beach and would not go back to the water. I’ll go in it now, but only about up to my knees.”

Ms. Mohler:

“I snorkel a lot with my family. One fear of mine was that I would see a shark while I was snorkeling. Whenever I was out in the water, I would do some circles underwater looking for sharks. Not that I could do anything if I encountered one, but at least I would see it coming. I was with my family about five years ago at an island called Eleuthera in the Bahamas. We were at this little bay that was pretty deep and far from land.   The water is pretty rough, and all you see is seaweed at the bottom. I’m getting pretty nervous and thinking this is prime shark territory. There had to be about 30 feet of water underneath us. I turn around and what do I see? Two dorsal fins break the waves, and I think ‘Oh my god. This is it. This is how I go. I’m not gonna tell anybody, I’m just gonna be the only one terrified in my last moments’. Turns out they were two Dolphins. So then my next thought was are these mean or nice Dolphins, because I had just read reports of dolphins often circling people and essentially drowning them. They were nice. They played with us and followed us back to shore.”

Ms. Swegler:

“I’m afraid of cockroaches. I will acknowledge that the Men in Black scene where he is stepping on the cockroaches and there is a giant cockroach still creeps me out. I saw that movie when I was 18 and in my freshman year at college. But, it’s more of a fear that cockroaches can fly, and their kind of gross. I’m not actively afraid of them, and I know their not gonna do anything to me. I get startled by them and their disgusting creatures. But God created them for a reason and they’re a part of the ecosystem, so therefore I have to respect it, but I don’t care for them.”