Arachnophobia

Written on 2/23/09

The spider emerged from my bedroom in a particularly brisk scurry. It hugged the wall as it ran, until it was beneath the TV stand. There, it paused for a moment, perhaps considering which direction to move in next. I had already noticed the terrible creature, and began keeping an eye on it as soon as it rounded the corner from my bedroom to the living room where we were watching TV. But my roommate, Alison, had not.

“Oh my God!” Alison yelled. She held the “O” so it sounded more like, “Go-o-od”.

I didn’t even need to ask what the problem was.

But still.

“What?!” I yelled back, matching her shock, and raising my voice higher for effect. Truthfully, I had seen this sort of specimen before. I knew it was a wolf spider, and I also had a good idea as to how it appeared in our Brooklyn apartment.

“Spider! There’s a huge spider under the TV stand!” Alison was out of her chair now in a position midway between standing and crouching. She looked as if she might launch into the air and land on top of the chair in an attempt to get as far away from the ground and the spider as possible.

“Oh my God!” I screamed, still pretending I hadn’t been aware up until now.

This is customary whenever I spot a large insect or arachnid in the company of other people. My fear of coming into contact with a spider exactly like the one I was sure was sizing me up from under the TV stand is embarrassing. And because I prefer to have things like this taken care of for me, I choose to silently keep an eye on the uninvited guest until someone else notices and takes control of the situation.

“What should we do?!” Alison cried, terrified.

“The mop,” I said, still seated, pointing at the tall kitchen cabinet containing a Swiffer. “It’s flat on the bottom. Squish it with that!”

The spider was bigger than any turning up in your house should ever be. I tucked my legs up in an Indian-style position on my chair and kept an eye on it while Alison went for the Swiffer. I needed to be a safe distance from the creature and was prepared to make a run for the front door should it begin to move in my direction.

The thing is, I happen to be morbidly fascinated by spiders exactly like ours. I could have sat in that chair and studied it all day from afar—as long as there was no chance of the spider ending up on my foot. Or arm. Or head. Because if it ever looks like this might be even a slight possibility, I turn into a shrieking hyena and start propelling myself around the room, doing punches and kicks in a an effort to rid myself of the cause of my sudden hysteria.

“Ayeeeeeee—aahhhh! Eeeeeeeee! Get—it—off—of meeeeeee!”

I discovered this shameful side of myself at the age of fifteen, when I went to grab a pair of clean jeans from the laundry room at the back of the house one morning. I pulled them from the top of a pile of folded clothes, shook them open and put one leg in. Out popped a small house spider that sat dumbfounded on the floor for a second before scurrying out of sight.

“Aaahhhhhhhh—ayeeeeeee—eeeeeeeee!”

My father came running in, fearing the worst. Instead, I was in trouble when he discovered that I was only screaming because there had been a tiny spider in my pants.

“Alyssa, for Christ’s sake, get control of yourself. It was just a little spider and now it’s gone. Put your pants on. What’s the matter with you?”

But getting control of myself in a situation like this is easier said than done. If there had been one spider in my folded pants, who was to say there wasn’t another one hiding in there, too? How did we know I wouldn’t put those pants on and wear them all day and unknowingly be bitten by a spider.

The pants would need to be inspected.

My father grabbed the jeans and shook them once, then handed them to me. “There. Now put your pants on and get out there for breakfast.” I took the pants from him and after he left the room, conducted my own thorough inspection before putting them on and joining the rest of my family in the kitchen.

But nothing could compare to the variety of spider I would encounter years later, when we moved to a house farther away from Philadelphia.

While brushing my teeth one evening, I noticed a very big brown spot on the front of one of the steps leading up to my third-floor bedroom. Intrigued, I moved in closer to get a better look. I realized my mistake at once.

“Aaahhhhhhhh—eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

“What’s the problem?” I heard my father shout from inside my parents' closed bedroom door behind me.

“Help! There’s a really big spider!”

I heard my mother sigh and then address my father with a stern tone of voice. “Chuck, you’re a fool if you go out there and kill a bug for her. She’s twenty three years old. She should be able to handle this stuff on her own.”

But my father has never been one to refuse taking care of one of his children’s problems, especially those of his daughters. Within seconds he was out in the hallway, standing next to me with a tissue. The expression on his face turned from annoyed obligation to shock when he saw the spider. He now knew that something more than a tissue would be necessary. So my father squashed the giant creature with his slipper and then used the tissue to clear it up. He disappeared back behind his closed bedroom door and I heard him explain to my mother, “It was big. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

That house had been the house that introduced “wolf spider” into my vocabulary. So when I saw the hairy beast that was currently sitting under the TV stand in my Brooklyn apartment, I was filled with an odd sense of familiarity. And because it had emerged from my bedroom, I was certain it had hitched a ride in the Trader Joe’s bag my brother brought with him from my parents’ house, when he had visited the day before.

“Here’s some stuff Mom wanted me to give to you. It was in the garage,” was what my brother had said when he handed the bag to me.

It was in the garage. I replayed the sentence over again in my head.

I was still sitting cross-legged in my chair when Alison reappeared with the Swiffer. She gripped it tightly with both hands like a dangerous weapon and marched over toward the TV stand. She looked like a crazy person about to embark on a killing spree—the type of murderous crazy person who, once arrested and arraigned, would plead temporary insanity.

The spider knew what was coming. When Alison neared it, it ran for it’s life.

Here, I screeched and darted into the kitchen, where it was safe to watch Alison finish her gruesome rampage. Once she had completely pulverized the spider and was certain it was dead, Alison looked over at me.

“What the hell was that thing?!”