Miss Muffet Chronicles

A true story from a friend of mine about her battle with a scorpion in her house reminded me of my own skirmish with a spider several years ago.

First thing you need to know: I’m afraid of spiders. I cannot even look at one without reacting in horror. For laughs, my younger brother used to borrow books from the library with those larger-than-life pictures of spiders and leave them lying open around the house. There I was - ten years old - coming down the stairs to the table for breakfast only to see a picture of a magnified tarantula the size of a dinner plate, oh those beady eyes and eight hairy legs, laying on the floor next to the table. Needless to say, my brother enjoyed the reaction he received from his sister followed by my mother’s stern admonishments to control our behavior (namely our screams) unless we’ve encountered a dire situation placing one of us in the path of a large vehicle.

But I digress…

It happened in my first real apartment. I was out of college living on my own far from family and friends. I enjoyed my first taste of freedom. My day consisted of long hours of work followed by reading or watching TV, perhaps an outing to the mall or the local bookstore. No pets, no other responsibilities. It seems like I was living in another lifetime, in a galaxy far, far away.

I was going through my pre-bedtime routine, wandering between the bathroom and my closet, when I stopped. Something was wrong. Something was moving on the floor of the bathroom….arrgghhh! It scrambled into the corner of the room. I ran to get my trusty broom.

Then I panicked. There was nobody to call to take care of this problem. I had to do it on my own. Face my fears. All eight legs of them…

I quickly found out that my broom was not the best tool for a project of this magnitude. Its flimsy plastic bristles barely pushed dust across the floor, and dust didn’t move under its own volition. I screamed. I swatted from a distance of four feet. I screamed again, in hopes that I would gain warrior powers through the scream to get rid of this intruder. Shower curtains were knocked from the rod and the toilet was an innocent bystander in my assault. The spider just stared at me.

In hindsight, this member of the arachnid family was probably the size of a quarter. However, it could have been the bird-eating variety found in the jungles of South America for the fear it caused in me. And my faithful reenactment of the shower scene from Psycho did nothing to provoke a reaction from the spider or from my neighbors either. They probably assumed I was having a nightmare… which was not too far from the truth.

I stepped back. Maybe I could leave it in the bathroom – allow it to live the rest of its life in relative obscurity. Then I remembered that I had only one bathroom in my apartment. So we would have to face each other at some point. Or I would have to find another bathroom.

Wearing my best Braveheart face smeared with sweat and tears, I gripped my broom in one hand and approached the spider again. Unflinching, it stared back at me (at least I imagine it did – I could not see those eyes in the glare of fluorescent light). I grabbed a shoe from my closet and flailed aimlessly in the spider’s direction. It moved out into the room away from the brown mass flying towards it.

I screamed for the hundredth time that night and hit the floor with my shoe. Splat. Oh, the tragedy.

One innocent spider’s life ended that night. Weeks later, I still wouldn’t wear the shoe that accomplished that gory task.

I’ve got problems, I know.