I think I can trace it back three decades to my toddler years when we lived in a rent house in Russellville while building another house. To say that the bathroom was dinky and old is an understatement...instead of a sink vanity with functional doors to hide your toiletries, it had a curtain that hid large spiders. No joke...they lived in there. I saw them on more than one occasion. They would wave their hairy little arms out from behind the curtain just to taunt me whenever I was forced to go in to the bathroom. I was scared silly of that creepy little indoor-outhouse, and I'm sure it impaired my potty training immensely. Keep in mind I was two years old, so you know my memory of the mortifying bathroom experience is nothing less than 100% accurate.
Fast forward three years to the new house. I was playing outside, minding my own business and definitely NOT getting in to anything, when I saw a HUGE spider under the carport by the back door. I screamed bloody murder and hyperventilated while riding my bike like the wheels were on fire. I immediately rode to the front door to tell my dad (after I peed my pants, of course). He was pretty good at shooting at things that he didn't like around the house at this particular time in his life...snakes, cats, stray children who wandered too far from home, you get the picture...so I'm fairly certain that he shot the spider to protect me, but I must have repressed the memory from the sheer trauma of it all.
And then there was an incident at my mom's house about 5 years ago. I got a GINORMOUS spider bite...like seriously, I thought I could see fang marks from where it sunk its crazy sharp fangs into my abdomen (or whatever they bite you with). I was certain necrosis was going to set in and cause me to lose some belly blubber while slowly wasting away from the neurotoxins. So I wore a charcoal patch for a few days to pull out the hideously poisonous venom that was injected into my system, but alas, the terrible bite went away without causing any lasting (physical) damage.
I loathe those creepy little arachnids. And I have my reasons. Are you getting the picture??
Now, on to why I'm writing about this particular topic. This morning as I performed my regular stand-in-the-closet-for-five-minutes-thinking-about-what-to-wear-to-work-routine, I notice a silky little spindle on my upper closet shelf out of the corner of my eye. Hello, heart attack! My first thought was to spray the spider down so that it slowly asphyxiated and died, but all I could find was ant spray. But spray it down, I did! And then I saw it again...a hairy little leg waving at me from the travel bags. I might have had a PTSD flash back from the crappy bathroom 30 years ago, but at this point my ability to think rationally was on a rapid decline. As a full fledged anxiety attack was brewing, I was too fearful to even look up, but I'm certain I caught a glimpse of a brown recluse easing its way from my travel bag stash that was encapsulated in spider webs like a cocoon onto my clothing hanging underneath (OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration about the web cocoon). So I did what any any rational-thinking arachnophobe would do, I grabbed the nearest object that could be used to demolish a spider: a shower rod. Never fear, I didn't rip it off the wall in my moment of sheer terror, it was a spare that was hanging around it the closet. I proceeded to knock down all luggage from the top shelf and beat the shitzu poodles out of my clothes that were hanging with my secret spider-killing weapon. As if that wasn't enough, I did a little river dance on all the bags I knocked down. I'm pretty sure I saw a leg (or eight) flying through the air in my fury. Take that, spiders! You're not pulling a slick one on me. Just call me Jody the Spider Slayer. And I even made it to work on time.
Take heed little kiddies: If you come to my house on Halloween dressed as a spider, you might find a crazy woman shooing you off the porch with a shower rod.
