SPIDER TEST: Does this picture make your skin crawl? Make you want to turn off your computer screen? Cause you to immediately scan the ceiling for signs of one of these eight legged monsters? If you answered YES to all three questions, you, like me, are. . .
Phobic. In that hair-raising, paralyzing, shriek-like-a-girl kind of way. I don't know when it began, but here is what I know: I once woke up to find one descending upon my face. All eight legs wiggling a few inches from my nose. While driving, one once dropped down from the van ceiling and hung, suspended in front of my eyes. I nearly drove off of the bridge I was crossing over. I once fell into an unsettled sleep after having forced myself to try and ignore the fat one in the far corner of my room. I woke with a large lump in the back of my throat and promptly swallowed. The spider was nowhere to be found, and whatever it was I swallow went down my pipe reeeeeally slow. I heard about a species that likes to burrow her eggs into human skin, and when they are ready, the babies break through the skin by the hundreds and scurry away. This very day I was sitting on the couching relaxing with my baby when a fat hairy spider the size of a walnut scuttled across my lap!
They know I hate them. They know I think the world would be a far better place without them, and so. . . they find me. Always me. The fat hairy spider did NOT find Aidan's lap. It found mine. And I tore off the couch clutching the baby far too tightly, (in hindsight, I have only God to thank that I did not drop Isaiah onto the floor), I hopped up and down and hollered Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I did not stop hollering until I saw the spider on the floor. Aidan, naturally, sauntered over and squished it with a paper towel without a care.
Ugh. Give me a snake, and I will hold it as it coils around my hands. Give me a mouse and I will more likely chase it than hop up onto a chair. Give me a beetle, millipede, bat, rat or roach, but DO NOT GIVE ME A SPIDER!!! I despise them. I pride myself on being afraid of very little in the natural world, and am appreciative of most of God's creatures. But until I am safely home in heavens gates, I will NEVER see the beauty in this particular creation.
NOTE: I added the hideous picture above for dramatic effect, but I managed it only by looking sidelong at the screen. And, yes, I leaned way back in my chair, because it is entirely too big, and I am still in recovery from my visit with its cousin.
