Spiders.
The very word strikes fear in me.
Why? Well, I am afraid of them for one.
I never know when one will catch me off guard and send me screaming and running like a little child.
Believe me, I know this sounds silly, but I know I am not alone.
Yes. I have arachnophobia just like a lot of other Americans. In fact, arachnophobia is ranked among the top 10 phobias in America.
For most people, they have no idea why they are afraid of spiders, but I think I know when and where my fear started.
Here comes the flashback.
I was about four or five at the time when this traumatic incident happened, but I can still recall it as if it happened yesterday.
I told my mom that my sister and I were going to ride our trikes. I ran down to the shed to get my purple trike.
Like any other toddler, I jumped on without looking first. I started peddling as fast as I could down the gravel driveway, when I started to feel like things were crawling all over me. I stopped peddling and looked at my arms and legs. To my horror, tiny, baby spiders were crawling all over me.
I panicked; and started crying. My sister who was with me told me to take off my clothes to get them off of me so I took off my shoes, socks, green corduroy pants and my tan short-sleeved shirt as fast as I could, but they were still on my arms and in my hair.
I then started running to the house yelling for my mom.
She met me at the door with a concerned look on her face. I must have been a sight. As soon as she saw what the problem was she put me in the shower; and I guess all the spiders were washed down the drain.
After I was all cleaned up, my mom went to investigate what happened. She discovered that a spider had its egg sac on the front of the trike. As I peddled the trike, more and more spiders flew out of the sac right on me.
I can honestly say that even though my mom washed the trike off and made sure there were no more spiders on it, I didn’t ride it for at least a week. After that, I always looked to make sure there were not any spiders on my trike.
The second run-in with spiders occurred when I was in junior high I think.
I was up in my bedroom, when I started to see several spiders coming out of a spot on the ceiling, which of course just happened to be next to the door. These were pretty big spiders.
I walked slowly over to the door, when I swear these spiders leapt out at me like the ones on the movie “Arachnophobia,” which I never should have watched.
I ran out of my room and down the stairs. I told my mom and dad; and they told me “They are just spiders.” My dad even went on to say that spiders don’t leap out at you.
I kept telling them they were not normal spiders. My dad went up to my bedroom to check it out and the spiders leapt at him too.
He said they were weird spiders and too many to kill with a fly swatter.
My dad said he would go to town and get spider-killing spray, which he did.
However, even after my dad sprayed and killed all of the spiders, I refused to sleep in my bedroom for probably a week.
While others may be scared of ghosts, UFO’s or unexplained incidents, I tend to be afraid of what I can actually see, touch and run away from.
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