Irrational

SnorgTees.com, bro.

My ma sent me an altered version of the above image that had been swirling through Facebook. The uploader had added, (explicit lyric warning) "Fuck spiders." I thought that added a certain (pardon my French) Je ne sais quoi and it made me laugh.

These arachnids hold power over me due to their proximity to either myself or things that I need. Spider on the wall in the stairs? Not going downstairs. Spider by the toilet? I can hold it. Spider in my car? I guess don't really need to go anywhere today.

This irrational fear of spiders is a common phobia. While not particularly crippling, it does affect my behavior and thought process. Who am I kidding? If one surprises me, I turn into the 50s housewife from Looney Toons that hops on a chair and makes funny noises when she sees a rodent in her kitchen. It takes me a good while to shake off those heebie jeebies.

My eight-legged tormentors even haunt my dreams. I'm serious, and if you ask Jamie about it, he's likely to tell you all about it. Why would he rant on about it? Because I react in my sleep to a typical scenario. This scenario always takes place in bed with a large, creepy spider. It either drops down from the ceiling or is crawling on the blanket, and I physically react to this by yelling, gasping, panicking, jumping out of bed, kicking the blankets, and other things along those lines. While reacting, I slowly wake up and things start making sense and I realize I was just dreaming and I go back to sleep, though not after having woken Jamie.

When this first happened, way back when we lived in Long Beach before we were married, Jamie got out of bed, turned on a light and looked around for this spider I had seen. Now he just sighs audibly and rolls over. I don't blame him. It's getting old. I would love for it to stop, too.

I'm not sure where this phobia came from. Both my mom and my dad were my spider killers and never treated them in any way that would suggest I be frightened of them. When we finally have kids, I'm going to have to put on my strong face and hope for fearless children to be my spider killers. "Oh, that's just a harmless li'l spider! He's super scared of you, so you shouldn't be scared of him! Show me how brave you are and get him out of here for Mommy!" That's what kids are for, right?

Here's to being irrational and letting it affect your life! Wait... no. Here's to overcoming your fears! WOW. No. I am way too scared of spiders to do anything involved with overcoming my fear of them. So, here's to irrational fears and learning to live with them! Yes.