I HATE SPIDERS!

I HATE spiders. Have hated them for as long as I can remember...probably because of the house we lived in when I was a little girl. I shared the attic bedroom with my sister. It was a really neat place and we were always finding treasures...the previous owner hid pennies all over the place. The down side was the easy access for the spiders to come out of the woodwork at night! Yikes! I remember waking up with those huge, nasty wood spiders crawling all over my bed and me. It was the stuff of little girls nightmares.



In my family, my father, both sisters, and I suffer from arachnophobia. My mother is our hero because she has the ability to kill them without getting the willies and shrieking like a little girl. Many a family get-together has been filled with recounting the stories of various spider encounters...the spider that chased my father around the vestibule at church...the one that died after jumping into the hot tube to get at my older sister...the time I did a back flip during a Drama Class lecture because a spider had crawled on me...or the time my younger sister tried to crawl into the backseat while driving to my wedding because a tiny dust spider dropped down on a single thread right in front of her face...I could go on and on with these stories.



Last night I had a nightmare about a spider. The same dream that I have had since childhood. I was trapped in the dark and damp basement by a huge spider...my skin is crawling and I am covered in sweat just thinking of it. Told my mom about the dream. She remembered the dream...and all the times she had to soothe me because of it.



I am so terrified of spiders that if I see one, I will start to hyperventilate and cannot talk or move. That worked OK when it was just Brad & I. Now that I have two beautiful children to protect, I have to function. Or as my sister says...



I don't want to pass my fears on to them. So, I try my best to not "freak" around them and if there is a spider, I bite my tongue and kill it. It is hard, but you would be amazed at what you can do when you feel like your children are being threatened. I personally turn into a Momma Bear and squish those spiders until they are just a greasy spot on the floor.