LITTLE MISS MUFFETT–ME, By Julie Ann Monzi
They hide from everyone in my family. Except me. My mother can go months without seeing one. In fact, before I come to visit she vacuums her house extra-good, especially her basement. But when I go down there to use the shower, I’ll spot them anyway. Not one, not two, but four or five. Mom will come down the stairs, laughing and shaking her head.
“There’s one, there’s one, and there’s another.” I’ll point out each one nestled against the baseboard.
“How can that be? There were no spiders in this basement this morning.”
As she wipes down the basement, I’m squealing from the shower room. “Mom, you have got to see this.”
She comes into the room and I point. A spider perches in a web that is attached to the toilet paper and the wall.
Would you believe that at this time I was 25 years old? Go ahead. Laugh. I know, it’s pathetic having your mom do a spider check before you visit. I suppose she got used to doing it. I mean, my dad could only take it so many times when I was a kid and would scream for him to kill some little speck on the wall.
There is just something about spiders that bothers me. The creepy legs; the furry round bodies or the skinny, hooked ones; the way they crawl or sometimes even hop. Oh, the hopping ones. They bother me the most. If I tried to smash one with my husband’s shoe—notice I didn’t say my shoe—the darn thing would hop down off the wall and scamper away.
And forget about my getting one off the ceiling. It could drop down onto my shoulder or get stuck in my hair. Then I’d be left flailing around trying to get it off of me. Or passing out.
When my oldest child was a toddler, I noticed a spider on the ceiling above her crib. My husband was at work and none of my neighbors were at home.
I know. I called them.
But I did reach my friend across town.
“Could you come over and kill a spider for me?” I pleaded. (My apologies to the spider-lovers out there. I would think there are a few. The question is, why?)
She laughed. “Absolutely not. You’re going to scare your daughter. You have a sponge mop. Use that to smash it into the ceiling.”
Okay. I could do this. I retrieved the mop from the basement, pushed the sponge onto the spider, and then pulled the mop away. Voila!
But, nooooo. The spider crawled under the sponge and into the handle of the mop! Now what was I going to do?
With one hand, I opened the window, pushed up the screen, and tossed—yes, tossed—the mop out the third floor window. I made my husband retrieve the mop from the back yard when he arrived home. And I made him shake it out. He imagined the neighbors’ reactions had they seen a mop sailing out of our top floor window.
Now let me just say here that I know spiders are extremely helpful creatures. If they didn’t eat all those bugs, we’d be overrun with them. I know. I get it. I just don’t want them in my house. They can live in their “houses” outside while I live in mine inside. Sounds fair, right?
A couple of years later my husband and I were camping with our two little girls. Yes, I know. You’re probably wondering how a confirmed spider-hater can go camping. What can I say? I really and truly love the outdoors.
Anyway, it was a rainy evening, and the girls and I cuddled up, reading a story. I noticed something between the pages in the back of the book. A little hair wiggled out from the bottom of the book. Then another. I swallowed hard and slowly peeled back the pages. Not a hair. It was a LEG!
A daddy long legs was nestled in the center of the book with two legs hanging out. I tried not to startle my children as I handed the book to my husband who promptly put the spider outside and checked the rest of the book for me. (Now I ask you, have you ever heard of this happening? See, they come after me!)
Even though I didn’t scream, I still did what my husband calls the “spider dance”. I jumped up and down and then ran in place, shivering, shaking my arms and hands at my sides. All the while with an “ick” look on my face. He laughed, but it made me feel better.
According to dictionary.com, the definition of a phobia is “a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.” This fits my spider fear to a “T”. It’s kind of funny that above the phobia definition on the website is a link for “severe anxiety disorders”. That fits me as well. When I was 38 years old I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder which is an anxiety disorder. So my dad can rest easy now. I wasn’t just being petulant. I had a disorder! Wow, that news made me feel so much better about spiders. . .not.
Now that I’m in my mid-40s, I’m doing much better. I try not to kill spiders if I can get someone to take them outside. The other day I found one on our enclosed back porch. I tried–I really did!–to get it onto the fly swatter so I could carry it out. The darn thing kept hopping off. I kept talking to it, probably to keep myself calm. I could feel the anxiety creep up my chest, could feel the shivers on my arms and back. Finally, after it jumped off the swatter for the fourth time, I had no choice but to smash it.
But my burning question is why don’t these arachnids show themselves to my husband or kids? Are they like cats and know who is afraid of them and then they’ll become pests (pun intended)? Just so they don’t try to wrap themselves around my legs. . .
Julie Ann Monzi grew up in the Pittsburgh area but now lives in Gettysburg, PA, with her husband, three children, and five cats. She enjoys reading, walking the Gettysburg Battlefield, and watching British mysteries.
