reason no. 3,784 why i’m single.
I’m not easily startled.
I’m one of those “keep a cool head” people who can wade into emergencies and stare down creeps and walk dark alleys without seeing a boogeyman behind every dumpster.
However.
Spiders? Turn me into a complete and total KNOB.
I see one — well, okay, a spider bigger than say, the palm of my (very small! very small!) hand, not just a mini spider fooling around on a wall, because hey! hi. it’s cool you’re here, I understand our ecosystems need you, just stay out of my pants — and my brain goes absolutely blank.
I want to be ANYWHERE BUT THERE.
Which is essentially what happened in my bathroom early this morning when I came rolling in with my happy white towels, ready for a hot shower.
There he was.
On the shower curtain.
A behemoth (okay, not really, but he wasn’t tiny AND I DON’T CARE! IT WAS SHOCKING AT 5:45 AM!) of a spider, just waiting to torture me with his very presence.
I made an immediate and involuntary squeak toy noise, and shrank back against the wall.
He was blocking my Portal to Cleanliness, and I was not impressed.
I got a magazine — Avril Lavigne was on the cover, I hoped this would help — and steeled myself to take a whack at him, but every time I moved to do it, he moved enough to startle me into dropping Avril on the ground. And there was nothing solid behind him to help the magazine out, either, so my hits lacked little punch when they actually connected.
Sigh.
That’s how I ended up not showering, pulling my hair back into a ponytail, and doing my makeup bent in from the doorway, one eye trained on the interloper at all times. I’m aware of how ridiculous that sounds, but I literally could not force myself to stay in the room with him.
Finally, he made a hardcore break for it, and that’s when I screamed.
Screamed.
At 6:15 am.
It was at this moment that three things happened:
1. I felt like a COMPLETE TOOL and started to cry. CRY. Partly because of the spider and partly because I WAS BEING A TOOL.
2. Catherine came flying out of her room (she was due up any minute, it’s okay!) to see if I was injured in some way.
3. Dean heard me scream upstairs, and texted Catherine (who he thought was the screamer) to lie and say she woke up the baby (The baby was already awake, as was Dean.)
Here’s where the story improves, mostly because Catherine has a morbid fear of mice and understands the Power of Irrational Panic in Enclosed Spaces with Unpleasant Creatures. She would do no better than I did, if it had been a mouse.
(Which it wasn’t. It was something much smaller, of course. Did I mention that I’m a tool?)
Fortunately, Catherine is NOT afraid of spiders — a power I’d been trying to access for 30 minutes by whimpering in the direction of her door (forgetting, of course that Catherine sleeps like the dead.)
Once she figured out why I was crying, she went straight into the bathroom, shut the door, and less than a minute later, I heard the toilet flush. Then she came out, patted me on the back, and it was over.
Well, except for the fact that I still felt like a tool.
It didn’t take me long to get past it once I got to work and focused on other things, but part of me continues to flail because I never wanted to be one of those girls who was scared of stuff.
Especially a screamy one.
And here’s the worst part — when I’d have a cabin full of terrified girls gathered around a much larger spider at camp, I wouldn’t hesitate to actually PICK THE DAMN THING UP and put it outside, or dispatch of it in a less poetic and earth-friendly manner with my stowed-away and incredibly heavy copy of the Fall Preview Vogue.
I was the rescuer! Not the rescuee!
I’ve become a screamy girl. LATE IN LIFE.
I think this is more depressing than the day I realized that Andrew Ridgeley was never really going to have a comeback.
And I’m still not over that.
Sigh.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I will let you in on a little secret - clowns - not cool - I can tolerate them - even had my picture made next to one a few weeks back please note that I had several glasses of mulled wine but in general clowns as a rule should not be anywhere freaking close enough to me. I get all squishy inside - no screaming though.
In general my rule of thumb with fear is ignore it - whether it is standing in front of people or a spider on the shower curtain. Fear is our body’s reaction to get away from something that might do us harm. You are the savior in a group because you have time to realize that this is silly and you can squash the spider - when alone you don’t have the time to thing through the process. Next time you will look at the damn spider and swat it with your magazine.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Replace spiders with snakes, and you’ve got my girlfriend. She’ll even change the channel if a snake shows up in advertisements or on a TV show. Stuffed ones at toy stores make her nervous. Other than snakes, she’s cool as a cucumber (most of the time) when it comes to intense situations.
December 12th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
just stumbled across this post and 1) found it amusing and 2) I can completely relate.
hubby and I stayed in a motel straight out of psycho, once. I went in to check the bathroom for axe murderers, and sure enough, pull back the shower curtain to find one. A spider, I know for sure to have escaped from the zoo and hyped up on steroids.
seriously, this was a drinking, smoking, truck-stop spider with a mullet and tattoo that picks up women.
However, this explained the various blood stains on the bedroom carpet and the empty beer bottles under the bed. The bastard was clearly up to no good and had to be …”taken care of.”
December 12th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
You just made me shudder and give my shower curtain a thorough once (twice) over when I used the facilities…UGH UGH UGH.
Mice I can totally handle (have to it’s part of my job), but I’m TOTALLY with you on spiders!
I had a spider where I used to live that was as big as a side plate - I had to “take care of it” myself - I put my runners on and tucked my pants into my socks then threw a big shoe down on it then jumped on the shoe repeatedly - I still shudder thinking about it.
One thing I can recommend to you - don’t go to Australia if you don’t like spiders…they have gigantic ones AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
December 12th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Oh, and you are TOTALLY allowed “tool moments”..TOTALLY! And crying is a natural reaction to stress, and this qualifies!
December 13th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Meg - me and flies. Now you try and get away from a fly. I get all squeamish when I have to swat one.
My eldest daughter has a thing about spiders. Oh, and bananas. Don’t know where either of them came from. We just take it as par for the course.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Meg, Meg. A big hug for you :)
When I lived in my old house, we used to have big spider problems. You wake up at 4 am and stumble to the kitchen to make yourself some coffee and get ready for work. You can hardly open you eyes and suddenly they are wide open cause you just saw a huge spider. The size of a kitten! On your wall. Next to the shelf that keeps the coffee! Get a newspaper and whack the crap outta him.
My mom used to say that you normally only saw such big spiders in the Discovery Channel and it was like the spiders crawled outta the Discovery Channel to our house.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
For me it’s moths.
One time, there was a moth in the laundry room, and I was afraid it was going to crawl in under my door, so I had to get rid of it before I went to bed. My landlord walked in on me, whimpering, holding a bottle of Febreeze in one hand (to kill the moth, natch) and an open umbrella held like a shield in the other (to keep the moth from flying at me when I blinded it with Febreeze).
I felt ridiculous. But I was still happy she came and saw me, because she got rid of the moth.
December 16th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
MOTHRA.