I Hate Spiders

When I was a little kid, I briefly had dreams of becoming a politician so that I could give Alaska to the spiders.  I thought it was the perfect plan.  Humans would agree not to trespass on this new spider territory, and the spiders would agree not to trespass on human territory.  It was a total win-win: spiders could live without fear of being smashed by a shoe, and I could live without fear of waking up with a spider atop my nose.  It’s probably for the best that I never became a politician, though, because I imagine there would be considerable outrage at my proposal, not just from the Alaskans kicked out of their home state, but also from the cold, cold spiders.

I hate spiders.  When I see a spider it feels like my very soul is shuddering.  But--despite this--I really try not to kill them.  If I’m startled by one crawling on me, it might fall victim to my panicking, flailing arms, but for the most part I refrain from squashing.  To be honest, though, this decision developed more for selfish reasons than any noble understanding of every creature’s right to live:  as a kid I had a deep-seated fear that if I killed a spider, all of its friends, relatives, neighbors, and dentists would band together and seek revenge for the loss of their dear arachnid friend.  They would come after me and make me pay for squishing one of their own.  So I usually just got my mom to smash them, so at least I wouldn’t be held responsible for their deaths.

WHAT?  I never claimed to be a hero.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to feel like a jerk for killing something (whether directly or indirectly) that doesn’t even know that what it’s doing is bothering me.  So now I just try to ignore and avoid them.  If I see a spider on a wall, I just move to the other side of the room and go about my business (never letting it out of my sight lest it launch some sort of attack).  If one is hanging out above a doorway, I just pretend like I was PLANNING on staying in that room ANYWAY so I don’t have to walk under the 8-legged beast.  I don’t kill them, but I’m still afraid of them.  I once tried to simply decide not to be afraid anymore.  I told myself that spiders are little, their poison most likely wouldn’t hurt me much, and even if I were bitten by one of the monster black widows that inhabit my back yard, I would just go to the hospital and come out with a good story.  My fearlessness lasted exactly until the next time I saw a spider.

I’ve never even really had a traumatic encounter with a spider--well, except for that one time when I flipped over a bucket in the back yard and found a black widow the size of Jupiter less than an inch from my hand.  But I was already afraid of spiders at that point, so I can’t reasonably blame that incident for my hatred of the creatures.  I think it just  comes down to the fact that spiders are naturally terrifying creatures.  There is nothing about their appearance that does NOT strike fear into hearts.

I spent an entire day once researching different spiders on Wikipedia, and every single one was terrifying.  I had noticed these huge monster spiders that had been making huge monster spider webs all over the outside of our house, and I was concerned that they might be poisonous.  So I took to the internet to try to identify the beasts.  The only spiders I can identify on sight are black widows, and these were definitely not black widows.  For one thing, they were about three times as big as any black widow I had ever seen.  For another, they were brown.  Plus, they were all still married.  So, pretty clearly not black widows.  And “Not Black Widows” is really as far as I got in identifying the monster spiders outside.  For a while I thought they HAD to be brown recluse spiders, which are super super poisonous.  But then I realized that was just me being my paranoid self because brown recluse spiders don’t live on the West Coast.  Plus the spiders in my back yard weren’t being particularly reclusive.  Oh, and also the picture on Wikipedia didn’t look anything like what was hanging out outside.  So, yeah, paranoid self.  And let me tell you, spending hours looking at picture after picture of terrifying spiders was not good for my paranoid self.  I never solved The Mystery of the Ridiculously Scary Spiders Outside (probably mostly because I was too afraid to get near enough to take note of any identifying features), but when I finally tore myself away from the computer, I thought everything was a spider.  Jumpy the rest of the day.

Ugh.  Spiders.