There are two times… no, that’s wrong, there are no times when I actually like spiders as such, but there are two times when I like them even less than usual:
One, when they’re in big closeup on my computer or TV screen, or in a magazine or book;
Two, when they’re in my house and I’m the only one awake to deal with them.
I particularly dread the latter situation, and so obviously it came about last night just when I’d been thinking “hmm, haven’t seen any spiders in here for a few days”… there it was in the room with me, just sitting by the back door. The only way this could’ve been worse would’ve been if the fucking thing were in my bedroom (I expect that to happen in the next few days). Housemate was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him (he doesn’t like spiders but he’s not phobic about them like me), so that left your hero here. Oy.
Now, all I could do was spray the cunt, cos DAMNED if I was getting close enough to something that size to hit it with a shoe like I would if it were a cockroach (which I also don’t like but I’m not phobic about those)… so that meant hitting it with a lot of Mortein sprayed from a safe distance. And, well, it did not want to die (I’m surprised *I* didn’t die before it). It took more minutes than I would’ve liked for it to finally do so, and it kept hanging on to the wall for dear life, until it finally dropped off… I didn’t see exactly where it landed, but I saw it again a few minutes later. It didn’t get far and would not be going any further. Whew.
I kept looking over to the spot where the corpse was to make sure it was still there, and I put it out this afternoon. For once, housemate had no part in disposing of one of our eight-legged friends, I did this myself all the way… if I wasn’t so repulsed by having to do so, I might feel proud of myself for coping. I’m still catching myself looking over at the spot where the corpse was (did it just now, in fact, after I wrote those words) to make sure it’s not still there or something. Maybe I’m not coping 100%, I don’t know.
Hi, I’m an arachnophobe. Just thought I should clarify that in case it wasn’t obvious.
And I hate being an arachnophobe. I hate it so much I wrote a fucking POEM about it, which I’ll post later. I hate normally having to rely on housemate to deal with intruders when one of these eldritch horrors comes in. I know all the stuff about them being more afraid of me than I am of them, and how they’re (mostly) not going to hurt me, and they’re actually good to have around cos they’ll eat other bugs, etc. There’s no real reason to find them such abhorrent evolutionary mistakes, and it’s kind of irrational to do so.
I know that. I suspect most arachnophobes do. That’s why it’s a fucking PHOBIA as such as opposed to just being “ew, not into bugs” or something. It’s the difference between me freaking out at a spider and me not liking cockroaches but being OK with going after them with a shoe as opposed to just spraying them from the other side of the room. I know it’s irrational and I DON’T CARE. The idea of people actually being arachnophiles and liking spiders and finding them cute is incomprehensible to me. I know these people exist, I even know some personally, and I do not understand what the hell is wrong with them.
By this point you may be wondering what PZ Myers has to do with any of this. (I am, obviously, making a somewhat large assumption here that anyone other than me is reading this at all.) What’s wrong with him? Biologist, science communicator, blogger, fairly progressive as far as modern atheists go, seems like an eminently OK person. What’s the issue with him?
This.
In what I consider among the most cringeworthy videos of all time, a whole family of arachnophobes notice a small house spider on the ceiling, and freak out. There is much screaming and whining and indecision by daddy chickenshit, mama chickenshit, and a couple of shrieking baby chickenshits. They should all be ashamed.
I include the video just to document how stupid these people are, but I don’t recommend actually watching it — there’s way too much over-the-top drama over a harmless animal.
Cue Youtube video of family freaking out at the appearance of what, admittedly, even I wouldn’t call an egregiously large spider on their ceiling (as far as I could tell from the clip, it looked smaller than the one I had last night). Indeed, the freakout is just So Much that it feels deliberately exaggerated; as one of the commenters on the post says it’s like they were going for comedy. Maybe, maybe not. Either way almost everyone else commenting was like “LOL these dickheads”.
And, given the things I’ve said above, I was ever so slightly livid. Like I said, I think most arachnophobes know within themselves there’s nothing really to be afraid of from these creatures of nightmare. We feel chickenshit enough as it is without this sort of pissiness from other people in the “LOL you’re not as rational as I am” cheap seats. It wouldn’t need to be huge to freak me out; it would just need to be there.
So thanks for not very much, Paul. This was an effective way to get me to stop following you on social media, but would you want a chickenshit like me following you anyway? At least I know who not to ask the next time I need pest control…
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