A few weeks ago I ran a bath. I stepped in and sat down, and there, floating in the water between my legs, rather too close to my pubis, was a wriggling spider. I stood up again very quickly and swore. But I didn’t scream. These days, I can control the screaming.
You know what cured me of my fear of spiders? Watching Arachnophobia. Believe it or not. Before I watched Arachnophobia, I was afraid enough to break out in a sweat – jumping at spider-shaped shadows, squealing on sight.
I couldn’t sleep if I knew a spider was in my room. No matter where they had run to, no matter how many pieces of furniture I had to shift or dark spaces to light up, I had to know they wouldn’t come back. That all went away after I watched Arachnophobia. I got tough. I started kicking some spider butt.
It was a very literal and immediate transformation. I think it was the final scenes, the ones where the walls of the house are burning, and they’re covered in little spiders, and then the scene where the father is in the cellar with the mother spider, and the spider is thrown against a wall and electrocuted on a fuse box.
I went upstairs to my bedroom. There was a spider on my wall, sitting there, looking for a fight.
Big ugly eight-legged bully.
Instead of shrieking and finding something large to throw at it, or calling my father to kill it, I finally managed to do the sane thing.
I got a glass and a postcard and trapped the little bastard. Chucked it out of the window. I was so proud of myself.
I’ve never looked back since. When spiders are in the house, I’m the tough one. I’m the one who gets the little idiots out of the bath. Who sweeps them off my sister’s wall. I’m the one, who sometimes sits and stares at the enemy with a detached fascination, reaches out a finger to poke a still, chitinous leg.
I still can’t sleep with them in my room though. Particularly if they’re on the ceiling. If they are on the ceiling, I think they’re going to drop on to me as I sleep.
I think they’re going to crawl in my ear.
