A few days ago, while standing in line at Chase Bank, a hefty water bug sauntered across the lobby.

“Mommy! A cricket!” my 3-year-old shrieked, shimmying up my right leg as if I were a coconut tree.

“Kira,” I said in the most blase tone I could muster. “That’s just a cockroach. Don’t even worry about it.”

But inside, you see, I was very worried about it. A mouse, no problem. But a water bug, with those extra-long antennae quivering left and right? Gross.

My bad eyesight or my husband’s weak teeth will probably get passed on to our children whether we like it or not. But what about my fear of roaches? His fear of flying? We can – maybe – control the transmission.

In a city famous for its neuroses, we parents have to try especially hard to keep our hang-ups to ourselves.

“Shaking people’s hands,” one friend told me was her biggest phobia. “Me and Donald Trump, I know. But I just think of all the places those hands have been. And have you ever read any of those studies on the percentage of people who really wash their hands after they go to the bathroom?”

No, I answered, I hadn’t.

“You’d be shocked. So I make my kids say hello and shake hands with people, but I hope they don’t notice that I never shake hands with anyone. And if for some reason I have to, out comes the Purell,” she said.

She was right that not everyone washes their hands, by the way: In a 2005 survey prepared for the American Society of Microbiology, 92% of women traveling through Penn Station washed their hands after using the restrooms, compared to only 64% of men.

“Subways,” another friend, a mother of two teenagers, said. “I think each ride will be my last. So I encourage my kids to take the bus. They’ll want to go to the Village and I’ll say, ‘Great, take the bus,’ and they’ll look at me like, ‘Nice try, Mom.’ They say “‘Mom, we’re taking the subway. Don’t even start with us.’ They know I’m afraid, but they think I’m a little crazy. All their friends take the subway and it is so much faster. So I just try not to think about them riding it, because I get sweaty just thinking about it.”

Tunnels and bridges. Sharing drinks. Shoes in the house. Mice and rats. Small elevators. Deep water. Terraces. Public bathroom doorknobs.

These New Yorkers have got their fair share of issues.

“Good parents don’t want their children to be plagued with the same inner demons that they themselves wrestle with,” an Upper East Side psychologist told me. “Parents are more often able to recognize their issues and the desire to protect their children from inheriting them, if you will. But it is actually very difficult for many people to completely hide their fears and emotions.”

My husband reminded me that while I was a cool customer during the Chase episode, there have been other cockroach incidences where I was significantly less composed.

“I’m glad you were calm for Kira, but once or twice when there’s been a roach in the kitchen, you’ve gone bananas in front of the kids,” he reminded me.

This is true.

“Some phobias are completely irrational, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier for someone to suppress or hide their anxiety in front of their children,” the psychologist said. “And some fears these days, such as some of the various ways in which New Yorkers fear different kinds of terrorism, are more rational. But that also doesn’t mean that they’re easy to hide. Sometimes when the fears are more rational, the parents are less likely to want to hide their feelings, especially if they have older children, such as teenagers. People have such individual responses. But many parents these days are trying to keep their worries to themselves.”

“I don’t want to burden them with my worries about safety in the post-September 11, 2001 city, even if they are legitimate,” a mother of three said. “There’s nothing I or they can do to make things safer, so I just keep my mouth shut.”

“I don’t even bother trying to hide my meshugas any more,” another mother added. “The kids know I’m nuts and that’s that. I hope they don’t have half the hang-ups I do, but if they turn out to be a tad on the neurotic side, they can feel free to blame me.”

She may have hang-ups, but as far as guilt goes, she sounds pretty healthy to me.

sarasberman@aol.com