Daniel and I were riding in his truck to run some errands the other evening. He only has a radio in the truck and listens to some goofy radio stations. Stuff you wouldn’t expect a thrash metal fan to enjoy.
He started singing along with a song and I just had to laugh at him.
Daniel: “What! I love this song!”
It was “I’m Every Woman.”
I was babbling to him about work stuff and he started to reply, but then his attention was caught by something and he trailed off mid-sentence. I kept asking him what he was going to say. He kept staring out my side window intently. I looked outside on the sidewalk, trying to see what he was staring at. He pulled over into a bus lane, eyes still intent on something out my window, his hand fumbling around on the seat for something.
And then I saw it. A BIG spider on the sideview mirror of my door, crawling towards my OPEN WINDOW. I had my seat belt off in a flash and was trying to crawl over Daniel, away from my window, while he was trying to crawl over me to get at the spider. He grabbed his sweatshirt from the seat and next thing I knew, the sweatshirt and the spider were both gone. I thought for a minute he’d just tossed his sweatshirt on the ground outside but he said he smashed the spider—it was gone—and threw his hoodie into the back of the truck.
I have a deep-seated fear of spiders. It’s never far from my consciousness. I’m always aware of the potential for spiders lurking somewhere. When I ride my bike in between narrow spots, like between a brick wall and a pole, I’m not scared of hitting the wall—which I’ve done—or hitting the pole. I’m scared of there being a spider web between them that I might ride my bike through. Riding next to bushes or under low-hanging branches always has me thinking about the potential for spiders being on them. I never step into the shower without checking for spiders. I hate it when Daniel wants to leave the front door open to keep the apartment cool. Spiders will get in.
Etc.
The spider on the truck was pretty traumatizing. I tried to laugh it off and not let Daniel know how upset I was by it. I commended him on how he handled it—he did what he could to keep me from noticing it. He didn’t take his eyes off it, so he wouldn’t lose sight of it (I’d have had serious trouble if it just disappeared and we didn’t know where it went). But by the time we’d run into Home Depot and got back into the truck, he knew I was still upset. And I was. I was nervous, jumpy, and to be completely honest, I wanted to cry.
He asked if I was OK. And I had to admit to myself and to him why I was so upset:
I didn’t think California had spiders that big.
In Washington, spiders get huge. I mean, HUGE. I’ve seen spiders almost as big as my palm. (To write that I had to imagine a spider on my palm. Never do that to me again.) When the kids were small we lived in a house that had sooooooo many spiders. And if one appeared and Daniel wasn’t there to kill it, I’d pack up two preschoolers and a baby and leave. We’d usually go next door to my parents’ house. Sometimes my brother was home and he’d kill the spider for me.
Once my brother was over and a big spider came running out from under the couch, which we were sitting on. It ran straight at Nathaniel, who was about 4 years old. I screamed, “RUN, Nathaniel, RUN!” I meant for him to run away from the spider. Instead, he ran straight towards it, which also was straight towards me, and jumped up on the couch.
I wondered if I was scarring him for life, but Nathaniel eventually became my chief spider-killer. And he still is.
I have actually had my worst fears come true: I once had a spider on my face. And I once was faced with the sight of a giant spider crawling towards my poor, helpless, naked baby. (I don’t mean Nathaniel, although that certainly counts too.)
When I was young, probably 8 or 9 years old, I was playing in our garden and managed to walk through a spider web. This freaked me out, but not as much as seeing something dark and blurry on my cheek. Yes, I became hysterical, jumping around, madly brushing my hands all over me, until I was sure it could not possibly be anywhere on me. (You try brushing your back completely off with your hands. It’s not easy.)
And once when Elijah was a baby, I was sitting on the living room floor with him, changing his diaper. I went to reach over for the baby wipes and there it was—a big one. Like, it could be measured in inches. Crawling straight towards my baby’s naked bottom. I did what any mother would do—screamed as loud and as long as I could while grabbing the nearest shoe and smashing it, again and again.
It disturbs me to think of either of those episodes. I only record them here for my posterity’s sake. I want my descendants to know what kind of stuff their ancestors were made of.
So you see, since moving to California, I’ve only ever seen pretty small spiders. Like never one as big as a quarter. Never. Now, tiny spiders I can handle myself, IF I HAVE TO. In fact I killed one just the other day in my Sunday School class. I had a room full of ten 11 year old girls. Someone had to man up.
Spiders smaller than a dime. That’s about my limit. (If it had been bigger, and none of the girls were willing to smash it, I’d have taken us all outside for the rest of the lesson, or found someone else who could kill it for us.)
I think the biggest spiders I’ve seen in California are about nickel-sized. Maybe a little bigger. But definitely not quarter sized. In Seattle, you’d get silver dollar-sized spiders.
I thought all California spiders were small, until the other night in the truck. That spider was still small by Washington standards, but huge compared to anything I’ve seen in California so far. I’ve lived here four years. I honestly had convinced myself spiders didn’t get that big here.
When I told that to Daniel, he joked, “Well maybe the spider came with the truck from Minnesota.” We bought the truck from someone in the military who is stationed here but lives in MN.
I told him for the last ten minutes I’d been trying to convince myself that the spider came from Pismo Beach. Daniel was out there last weekend with the truck, camping and dirt biking. Pismo Beach is five hours away. It could have crawled onto the truck there, right? And just stayed holed up for days, maybe a week, until it’s daring nighttime side-view mirror escapade?
So then we’re driving to Target, and the wondering sets in. Where did that spider come from? Was it on the mirror when I’d adjusted it when we first got in the truck—with my bare hand? Had it been inside the truck and then crawled outside onto the mirror? Had it been lurking under the door handle and I almost touched it when I got in? It was so hard to open the truck door after thinking about that.
I was about to ask Daniel where it was when he first spotted it. Had it been on the ceiling of the truck and lowered down by a web? I started imagining all kinds of scenarios, none of them good. None of them could be. But I knew better than to ask Daniel for any details. He knows I’d just be torturing myself by asking. He’d refuse to tell me anything if I asked. He knows that while I have this compulsive need to ask for more details, hearing them will just make it worse for me. So I didn’t even bother asking him.
I was jumpy the rest of our truck ride. It was dark. The truck is full of places spiders could be lurking. It was horrible.
Sometimes I think about how silly my fear is. A spider is just a small thing. It’s not going to hurt me. Even if I get bitten by one, it won’t be that much worse than a mosquito bite. I’m not scared of them hurting me, though. I’m just scared of them. The idea of one touching me is sooooo unthinkable. If I have to step on a small one to kill it, I’m aware of that spot on the bottom of my shoe for awhile afterwards. A spider touched that spot. I feel like there’s a trace of it lingering. I’m aware of that spot on my foot.
I start thinking, what if I could go to a shrink and have this phobia fixed? And not be afraid of spiders anymore? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
I mean, there’s something I didn’t want to think about, and tried to shy away from, but of course I couldn’t. What if I’d been alone in the truck when that spider appeared? What would I have done? I think I would have pulled over and parked as quickly as possible, and walked home. If I’d been too far away to walk, I probably would’ve enlisted some stranger’s help in getting it off the truck. And then been petrified the whole drive home that another spider was going to drop down on a web right in front of my face.
You can laugh, but I’ve had it happen before. While driving. Fortunately it was a tiny spider and Nathaniel was sitting next to me and grabbed it.
So if I could have my phobia fixed, would I? I just can’t imagine living in a world where I could tolerate spiders. I honestly can’t. I hate them so much. They are so horrible to me that I can’t comprehend them ever being something I could be OK with. It just doesn’t compute.
I mentioned this to Daniel and he said spiders are a common fear. And that’s true. People can definitely commiserate with me. Daniel has a rather weird phobia. It’s pretty silly and he’d be embarrassed if I posted on my blog about it, so I won’t say what it is. He brought it up, though, to make his point—at least I’m not alone in my irrational fears.
I had to tease him a bit about his phobia by quoting Arrested Development: “There are dozens of us! DOZENS!”
(And no, he’s not a never-nude.)
Out of all the silliness of my behavior in the truck that night, only one thing I said made him look at me like I was an idiot:
“I am so blogging about this.”
Yet he was the one who started singing the words to “Sister Christian” when it came on the radio before the singing in the song had even started.
And when I said, “You know this song is about a real girl?” he’s the one who answered, “Yeah, she lives in Oregon…”
