Ok. Full Disclosure. I have a serious issue with spiders. Growing up I was just fine. I live in an unfinished basement and that meant lots and lots of spiders. I didn’t let them take over or anything, but if I happened to come across one, it was no biggie to just smash that little (or big) creeper and be on my way. But then, when I was in high school, my friends and I decided to go see a movie and me, being super-duper smart in that moment, didn’t think to ask what we were seeing. I knew my friends had the same values I did and wasn’t concerned that I would end up in a theater watching a bunch of naked people running around or anything like that, so I just went along with the plan. We ended up seeing Arachnophobia and even then, at the outset, I didn’t have a problem. Unfortunately for me, partway through the movie there was a scene where one of those arachnids crawled into a guy’s ear. Havoc ensued and that was the death knell for my peaceful coexistence with spiders.
You see, we watched a lot of Star Trek at my house while I was growing up. And there is this whole plot line in the 1982 Wrath of Khan where a super creepy bug thing crawls into people’s ears and takes control. There is one scene where one of those critters crawls back out amidst blood and death and it very seriously creeped me out. Pretty much traumatized me for life. I could never watch that movie again. Even as an adult, I can’t watch it. And earwigs? They are on my zero-tolerance list. Not only do they look an awful lot like that giant Star Trek bug, but they have the word “ear” right in their name. Which of course, reminds me about bugs crawling into ears!
So, when I watched a spider crawl into an ear while sitting in a dark theater surrounded by my teenage cronies, all of a sudden that cast arachnids into a whole new, super creepy, childhood trauma kind of light. And I have never been the same. There was an occasion when I was living in that same basement, albeit a different room, after I graduated from college and came home late and night to find a massive spider on the bedroom wall. The beast was huge! And I knew there was absolutely no way that I was taking my eyes off that thing to let it crawl who knows where until I fell asleep and left my ears available to occupy. No. Freaking. Way. But I also knew that if I crushed it with one of my shoes, I would never be able to wear that shoe again without some serious heebie jeebies coming into play. And so, what did I do? I scampered across the hall, grabbed one of Rachael’s super chunky shoes, and killed that spider dead. The thing was so big that I heard it pop when I smashed it. [insert full body shudder here] It was seriously disgusting.
Now that I’ve laid bare the origins of my very own arachnophobia (I think it’s kind of ironic that the name of the movie ended up being one of my actual fears), let me tell you what happened today. I was having a massage and as usual, the room was dim and quiet, very relaxing, very peaceful. Then all of a sudden, my massage therapist freaked out. She jerked and began cussing and while I was face down and couldn’t actually see her, I could sense her shudders and revulsion. She then proceeded to tell me that a spider had just dropped down from the ceiling onto my back. Which was sans clothing since I was in the middle of a massage. And what did I do? I calmly laid there and didn’t even freak out while she grabbed some tissues and killed that creepy bugger. Luckily for me, it was small enough that I couldn’t feel it crawling around. Because if I had, there would be absolutely no way that I could have held onto my calm demeanor. Even as I type this, all the hair on my arms is standing up and I’m wondering how in the world I managed to avoid screaming at her to, “Get it off me, get it off me, get it off me!” But at the time I was cool as a cucumber. And that’s what counts, right?
So today, I feel like I accomplished a great feat. I faced…sort of…a spider and came out the champion. I wasn’t the one who actually killed it, but neither did I panic because it had a straight shot from my naked back to my exposed ear.
As a conclusion to this peek into my disturbed psyche, I didn’t tell Rachael about the shoe until about ten years later. We were both married and had little kids by then and to her credit, she just laughed and asked which shoe I used. That’s one pretty amazing sister. 😂
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