along came a spider

"Little Miss Muffet" by John Everett Millais
“Little Miss Muffet” by John Everett Millais

This morning started off with a blood-curdling scream – mine. I was minding my own business, loading the dishwasher, when I turned to glance at the clock – and there, dangling right in front of my nose, a spider hanging from the ceiling on his thread. Now I won’t tell you how big he was because I have no objectivity when it comes to spiders, and anyway, as far as spiders are concerned, size makes not one iota of difference. They all loom large in my consciousness!

Well, it didn’t take long for the knight-in-shining-armor, well, the knight-still-in-his-pajamas, who had been minding his own business working from home today – thank goodness! – to scramble down the stairs ready for battle. What he found was a woman cornered by the sink, wielding a dirty spatula most ineffectively. He performed the required deed swiftly and promised the poor spider an honorable burial at sea. After giving a warm hug and some soothing words to the lady-in-distress, he went back upstairs and a moment later I heard the toilet flush.

As I returned to cleaning up after breakfast and waiting for my adrenaline to stop pumping, I decided that perhaps it was time to share my spider saga with my readers – one never knows from where inspiration for a blog will come!

It all began when I was about three years old, although my parents are a bit hazy about the time frame. We had moved into the house they built in the woods when I was three, and I was still young enough to be playing outside in the summer with no shirt on… I was sitting on the front porch when a spider let itself down on a thread from the gutter, landed on my bare back, and started to bite me. I started screaming and running away and around the house, my parents chasing after me and trying to figure out what was wrong with me. When they finally caught me and discovered the problem, one of them said, “Oh – it’s only a spider.” I’m not sure I ever saw the culprit on my back, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been highly sensitive, and from that moment on developed a profound fear of spiders. In my childish brain I couldn’t understand how “only a spider” could inflict so much pain and terror.

Unfortunately for me, spiders are strangely attracted to me and they actually do seek me out. Must be my pheromones or something, but as anybody who has ever spent any time with me will affirm, they do manage to come to me while ignoring all other humans in the vicinity. They usually drop down from the ceiling, but once I was lying on my bed reading when one popped up at the foot of the bed and started charging straight for me. Once I was on a treadmill at the gym, where the ceiling was at least two stories high, and one dropped down from it, right in front of my nose, causing me to panic and stumble and make Tim, on the treadmill next to me, wonder why on earth I was suddenly flailing around.

Now I know spider encounters are supposed to be messages from the universe that I need to pay more attention to my creativity. Believe me, I have the best of intentions to stay calm and appreciate the message the next time I see a spider, but they always startle me and the outcome is always irrational panic.

The spider nightmares began in 1972, when I was 15. I suppose they were an expression of the anxiety I felt about moving to a foreign country with my family. I had never moved before, and had never been overseas, not even for a trip. We were to take an ocean liner from New York City bound for Athens, Greece the next day. We were spending our last night stateside in an aunt’s one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and we were packed in like sardines sleeping on cots – all the women in the bedroom, all the men in the living room. Many relations had come to see us off.

Well, in the middle of the night I “woke up” to see a spider coming down from the ceiling toward me. Naturally I screamed! The light came on and I pointed to it. A bunch of groggy aunts, my mom and my sister were asking, “what? where?” I pointed and pointed but no one could see it and they finally concluded that I was having a nightmare. Eventually I didn’t see it any more and realized it had to have been a dream. These spider nightmares have been with me off and on ever since.

It’s amazing sometimes that no matter how well you think you may know another person there is always something new to learn. Tim & I were married in 1975 and that is when I met my sister-in-law, Fran, and we have been as close as sisters ever since. Somehow one evening in 2007, 32 years after we met, Fran and I got to talking about dreams and made the startling discovery that we both have had the same recurring spider dreams! While having this dream we are both convinced that we are awake and keep pointing (sleep-pointing?) to the spider as it moves across the wall or ceiling, trying to convince whoever is in the room with us that it is actually there and being frustrated that the other person can’t see it. If alone in the room, a blood-curdling scream brings someone in soon enough. Only half-jokingly I theorized that in past lives we must have both been eaten by a spider and were somehow destined to be linked in this life, too, by marrying two brothers. Fran decided that we had been flies…

So those are the highlights of my spider tale. There have been too many real encounters and dream encounters to ever possibly tell them all, but that’s enough of this subject for one day!

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

10 thoughts on “along came a spider”

  1. Hi Barbara,

    I found your spider tale quite fascinating, it never occured to me that a spider can actually freak out somebody. Some people panic when they see a cockroach! well, I personally don’t usually panic on seeing any insects and flies.
    Well, nice that you have moved to a new domain, its great! 🙂

    Have fun
    -Sonali

    1. You’re lucky, Sonali, to be so unaffected by creepy crawly bugs! Thanks for liking the new domain – there are some things I really like about it and other things that I’m not so sure about yet!

  2. Hi Barbara,
    Spiders can be a bit of problem here in OZ we have a lot of very poisonous spiders, so if someone is bitten by a spider it is usually a mad dash to the hospital just in case, with hopefully the spider in a jar so they can work out if it is one of the dangerous ones.

    I have never been bitten by a spider, but if I see one, I usually spray the poor thing to death, just in case. A lot of people do the same here, some I recognize as harmless, these I just catch and put outside, but if I’m not sure it is gone.

    1. Oh dear, Mags, perhaps I should not plan on visiting OZ some day! I have been bitten by spiders many many times. One memorable morning after sleeping on our old couch I woke up with 60+ bites and my sister was dabbing Benadryl creme on them all day, counting them as she went along. We paid the handyman here to take the couch to the dump and then fogged the place.

      I sure wish I had a can of spray tucked in the corner with me yesterday, although spraying chemicals in the kitchen around food would probably have given me pause… I know lots of people who take them outside and they’re welcome to do it for me if they happen to be here! 🙂

  3. Hi Barbara. What a story! I love the expression on Miss Muffet’s face. I am also afraid of spiders. However, they do kill other insects, so I am grateful for them. Something about having eight legs… Jane

    1. Hi Jane, I love the painting and the expression on her face, too. I would no doubt appreciate spiders more if they kept to their business of eating other insects instead of pursuing me! Back in May I had an encounter with a house centipede. Turns out they are beneficial predators that eat spiders, so I decided I didn’t mind having it in the house after all… 🙂
      http://www.ingebrita.net/2011/05/19/scutigera-coleoptrata/

  4. What an amazing amount of spiders in your life. When you got to the part that your sister in law had the same spider dream as you I felt my heart hammering in my chest. Good gracious! Does Ted Andrews have anything on spiders?

    i also love the Millais painting.

    btw
    (1) I signed up for emails of your posts. will let you know if I get something.
    (2) we can’t check a box to get your reply as an email…?

    1. I don’t know if you’ll see this comment, Rosie, but Nate is working on the comment subscription today. I’m not getting notified of comments either. I hope he can find a way for readers to check a box, or half of the fun of blogging will disappear!

      Funny thing about Ted Andrews – I went to see what he had to say about spiders and I guess I was giving off strange vibes. Tim is working from home today and he asked me what I was doing, which he never does while he is “at work.” I blurted out that Rosie wants to know what Ted Andrews says about spiders but there are big pictures of them on the page and I can’t get past them!

      So Tim took the book from me and put layers of sticky notes over the two pictures. So now I can quote a little of what Andrews wrote, but there are actually 4 pages of info which I’ve never read!!!

      “The spider is the master weaver. To the Native Americans Grandmother Spider kept and taught the mysteries of the past and how they were affecting the future. Spider reminds us to awaken our own sensibilities to be more creative in life.”

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