#66. Hold a Snake (and overcome my fear)

I have, for as long as I can remember, been afraid of snakes. I attribute it to finding a 6 ft long snake on my bedroom floor when I was 3 years old. Those kinds of things can scar you for life. Add in the fact that my brother used to chase me around with rattlesnake rattles (he told me that I could die just from touching it), and bam, you have me. A perfectly normal individual who runs screaming when there are snakes around. In grade school about once a year someone would bring a snake into our classroom to teach us about them and instead of touching it like most of the other students, I would hide from it. I decided that I needed to overcome this fear, and the most plausible way to do so was to hold a snake.
A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday evening I was invited over to my friend Jay's apartment. He had his girlfriend's snake there and a bunch of people were going to hold it. This seemed like as good a time as any to confront my fear. I went over and my friend Noel was holding the snake. Don't ask me what kind it was because in my opinion they are all disgusting. I decided to just touch the snake while he was holding it. That was difficult enough. I finally told the boys to put the snake on my hand and I would hold it. They told me to allow the snake to wrap around my arm, but there was no way I was going to do that. I held on to it just long enough to get my picture taken.
This did not achieve my goal of overcoming my fear, because I am still terrified of snakes. However, I did prove to myself that even when I'm scared to death of something I can face it anyway.