Spiders

Last week, the How to Do Everything podcast (the one Annie was featured on back in the day alongside Lisa Lampanelli) announced a spider statistic that has been haunting me:  you're never more than 1 meter from a spider.  Or something like that.  1 meter is not very much.  It kind of freaks me out.

Spiders and I have a relationship based on their location in relationship to me:

In a corner or on the ceiling far away from me?  We're cool.
Within hands reach?  Dead.
On me?  Super dead.
Within Annie's peripheral vision?  Probably dead, depending if I'm home or not.

I'm just not a huge fan.  They're either hairy or look spiny.  They have saliva.  They move funny, and they bite.  Some can even kill you, or just cause your tissue to decay.  No biggie.  What scarred me initially?  Arachnophobia, the movie.  I've posted about it before, not sure if it was here or not, probably Facebook.  I've heard I should watch it again to see how ridiculous it is.  I can't bring myself to it, though.  Seriously, seriously psychologically scarred.

I still, more often than not, check around the toilet before I sit down for a little poo time.  Similarly if I'm about to stick my hand inside a lamp shade.

When Google Imaging 'spiders', add the word 'cartoon'.  Trust me.

Now, I'm going to tell you a story about how a spider wrecked my computer room, and almost killed me earlier this week.  I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business.  And by business, I probably mean porn, but maybe not.  I think I had something to do in a few minutes.  I think I have some sort of amnesia.

Anyway, out of nowhere, a very large spider comes out from behind my monitor and starts going straight up in midair on some magic floating device.  Yes, I know they have webs.  Calm down.  Due to the size, the fact that it freaked me out, and it was at hands reach just seconds ago, he fell into the dead category.  I went off to go find a flip flop.

(Side note:  my mom told Annie and I a story about how she killed this giant, hairy spider with a thong.  The mental image was crazy funny.  Her with a G-string, snapping it at this ferocious, hairy beast with pincers.  Turns out that my mom still calls flip flops thongs.)

I walked back into the room with an old flip flop.  By this time, the spider was near the ceiling, over my computer.  The step stool is all the way in the kitchen.  The dining chairs are closer, but still all the way in another room.  So I rolled my computer chair over.  I stood on it, and it didn't feel particularly stable as I was reaching for the spider.  Being the engineer that I am, I got off, shoved it against my computer desk for stability, and climbed back on.  I'm a dancer dammit, I can control my weight on a rolling chair just fine.  Whack!

My first swing was close, but not a direct hit.  The spider started to freak and drop and move its legs around.  I didn't have much time, so I took another swing at him.  Which led to the chair rolling out from under me and smashing against the wall behind me.  I fell down onto the computer desk, bounced off and belly flopped on the hardwood floors.  But not before shoving my hand under my falling (super expensive, HD) monitor.

I laid there, sore, and unsure rather my crushed hand actually saved my monitor or not.  (It did.)  The top of my computer desk was all fucked up, and all I could think was:  the spider's probably still alive and crawling on me somewhere.  I found it alive 2 days later under the top of my computer desk.  I don't think I've ever hit a spider that hard.  There's still a leg sitting there for other spiders to see.

Fucking spiders,
~RoB