Spiders

Coincidentally, we had a lecture today on anxiety disorders, which includes phobias of all kinds. Oh hi there, as I was just saying - THERE'S A FLIPPING GREAT BIG SPIDER IN MY CAR!!!!

Well, a more accurate description would be that there is a slim chance that there's a flipping great big spider in my car. I saw it this evening when I was just popping down to the shop to grab some kitty litter for dinner. It was spreadeagled across the entire width of my left-side mirror. Yes - I realize that this is OUTSIDE the car. But you know how when you drive your car off the end of a jetty into the ocean because there is a spider on your face and you've gone berzerk the car sinks? That's because the car is not airtight. Ergo, that spider may even now be finding its way into my car through some tiny crevice or vent.

I drove all the way to the shop while looking at the spider on the mirror with one eye and the road with the other eye. It really hurt, let me tell you, but that's what you've got to do with spiders. They sit there and watch you, even as the freezing air whistles past whatever they use for ears at 60 km/h, and as soon as you glance away, they move closer. That's because spiders want to jump onto your face to make you dance. So they keep edging closer and closer until they are within jumping range.

Anyway, as I pulled into the carpark I looked away, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the spider scuttle from the mirror to the door and then I lost sight of it. I parked the car and spent five minutes walking round and round the car, squatting down to look under it and peering at it closely in the dark, but carefully keeping my face out of jumping range.

I probably looked pretty strange, but I would have looked even stranger if it had got on me and I'd done that crazy, jerking dance that you do when you have a spider on you and you're trying to fling it off by shooting your limbs out at random angles while flicking your wrists, ankles and hair before stopping briefly to see if it's still on you before starting all over again.

I think that's why the idea of having a spider in my car is so horrifying to me. Given that it's a physiological/psychiatric requirement to dance around like a mad bastard, I can't imagine what might happen in the confines of a small hatchback if it crawled onto me. At the very least I would put my feet through the floor and my head through the windscreen and then I'd be left with a primitive Flintstones car. But I suspect I would just sit there immobile for a few seconds and then simply explode.

When I was about 22 I was in a small car with three friends on the freeway down to the beach from Brisbane when a spider crawled out from behind the sun visor and onto the inside of the windscreen, right in front of the driver. Fortunately we were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic at the time, because we all got out of the car without even thinking to check if it was safe. Then, as usual, the spider disappeared. We ended up taking all our luggage, in fact everything moveable, out of the car but that spider was never seen again. We continued on with the drive, each of us with one hand on the door handle just in case we had to bail out again.

It's not that I'm actually afraid of spiders. I can catch them in glasses and put them outside the house while hardly screaming at all. I can also chase them down from high ceiling with brooms and I seldom throw the broom away like a javelin when the spider runs up the handle towards me. So yeah, I'm not afraid of them - they just freak me out. There's something so alien about spiders. It's primarily to do with the way they move. As long as they are still, I am cool. One they start scurrying, all bets are off. There is obviously something programmed into human brains to make them afraid of spiders, because all sensible people are. I suspect that in prehistoric times there were giant cave spiders that we had to fight for the best caves, and those ancestral memories live on. As may the cave spiders ... somewhere ...

As I mentioned above, I can catch spiders in a glass. I learned to do this because I won't kill them. There's nothing sadder than a spider which was terrorizing you only moments ago curl up into a spastic, twitching ball because you've killed it. As much as they freak me out, I recognize that the power differential is immense and it's not fair for me to kill something just because I don't like the way it moves. If they tasted delicious it would be a different story but fortunately for both me and spiders that's not the case.

Anyway, I'll be hopping in the car tomorrow and driving for an hour with my skin crawling, wondering if the spider is in the car with me. Maybe I should shave my entire body to make my skin super-sensitive. Yeah. So if you hear on the news tomorrow that some naked, hairless guy crashed his car on the freeway because he put his feet right through the floor, that was me. Otherwise, see you round.