I Hate Spiders

I hate spiders. They are my least favorite of all creepy-crawlies that walk the earth. No matter how innocent they may actually be, in my mind's eye, they are menacing horrible fiends that want to crawl on my face while I'm sleeping.  (My mind's eye is a bit disturbed.)


I think it all started when I was a kid. Growing up in the woods, we were surrounded day and night by the worst of them all- the Daddy Long Leg. My chore was to take a broom and wipe the webs & daddy long leg nests off the balcony ceiling. (The mere memory of it makes me throw up in my mouth a little.) Seeing all those little spider egg sacks up there really freaked me out. And I was pretty sure that all the spiders I was wiping down would crawl down the broom and onto my arm while I had that broom pointed up in the air. There isn't enough money in the world to pay for the therapy I'd need to repair that psychosis.


Spiders, like dogs, have an uncanny knack for knowing who hates them and those are the people they are inevitably drawn to. I'm a spider magnet. Normally I only have human stalkers named Dave but in the animal kingdom it's the spiders.  At least the Dave's don't stalk me in the shower.  Spiders do. They have no sense of decency. 

There I am, washing my hair, minding my own business when what do I see on the ceiling? A spider. It sees that I've spotted it (or maybe it heard my banshee-like shriek.) It immediately scurries towards me. I freeze on the spot. It's blocking my exit. I know, a shower curtain has two sides but my spider fear is irrational. To me, my exit is blocked no matter where the spider is physically located.

I'm naked and defenseless. The shampoo needs rinsed out of my hair but I don't want to lose that spider. It could climb into my warm dry towel and hatch a million spider babies and they'll all stream down my head when I wrap the towel around it and crawl on my face. At the same time, I have no plan whatsoever to dispose of this spider, for I am a coward and there is nothing to squash it with except shampoo and body wash bottles and an old shard of Irish Spring.

Then the unthinkable happens. It drops from the ceiling like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Now it is just inches away from me and all I can think to do is scream and cling to the shower curtain which isn't that sturdy and won't support me for long. Maybe it's my screaming, or maybe it's on a Hari Kari mission but the spider will always then plummet further down on his satin string of evil. At this point I have to choose between fight or flight, and knowing somewhere in the recesses of my tortured mind that flight will mean water to sop up off the bathroom floor later with the possibility of a spider ambush from the hidden folds of the shower curtain, I choose fight.

My idea of a Spider Shower Fight goes like this: I continue my ear piercing screaming while batting at the evil string protruding from the spider's butt. My hope is to use his web strand to knock him to the floor of the shower where he will be washed away down the drain forever and I won't have to touch him and he won't touch me. But that never happens.

Here is the reality of my Spider Shower Fight: I continue my ear piercing scream while batting at the evil string protruding from the spider's butt. As soon as my hand touches the string, the spider starts sucking itself back up- toward my hand. I scream louder and fling my hand madly, trying to get the little menace away from me. It ususally bounces off of me (again, more therapy needed) on it's way to the shower floor and then I realize that I still stand between it and the drain which is sort of clogged so there's a bit of a puddle. As the spider swirls around the water at my feet, it fights madly to gain purchase on whatever it can in order to live while I stomp in the water like the wildebeest of the wild Serengeti running away from a crocodile. I do this to keep it from finding me and trying to climb back up my leg to safety. I'm still screaming to raise the dead.

After the chaos dies down, I find myself still clutching the shower curtain and standing precariously on the edge of the tub peering down into the swirling water to watch the spider float down the drain and into oblivion. The shampoo is now dripping into my eyes but I'm loathe to climb back into the tub to continue my shower because what if that spider is aquatic and can swim upstream and back into the shower with me? The commotion in the shower was such that the cat has come in to investigate. (She can open the bathroom door, but she hasn't learned to shut it yet.) She brought along her poofy tail to indicate displeasure at having to come check on me. Her company gives me the confidence boost I need to climb back into the water.

Welcome to My Psychosis.