I have always been really afraid of spiders(who isn’t, right?) Some people think it is a learned behavior but my parents can testify that as young as 1 year old I could spot a spider across the room on the wall. One of my first phrases was “Boosha Boosha BUG!”

I must say, I’ve had a lot of not-so-great experiences with our little arachnid friends. When I was in fifth grade I woke up with a swollen eye and my ceiling covered with hundreds of spiderlings ballooning around. Apparently mama spider had given birth in the night in my room and hatched a wonderful little army of baby spiders whom she had to protect from the Great Monster sleeping in the bed (yours truly). Hence the eye swollen shut with the spider bite. That is enough to traumatize a kid for life!

Another night when I was in high school I had a bad dream about spiders (you know... the Arachnophobia kind). I woke up that morning and within the first hour of my day encountered 3 spiders descending from the ceiling swinging into my face, all in different places. Weird! I’m like Little Miss Muffet or something.

One time in college I was driving down the road with my friend in the passenger seat. I felt something brush against my leg and as I looked down I saw a big spider crawling between my legs on the seat headed straight inside my shorts. Instead of pulling to the side of the road (which would have been the wise thing to do), I decided to hit the gas as hard as I could and start swerving all over the road. In my simple mind I thought the sheer force of driving 80 miles an hour in crazy patterns would throw the spider from the seat and save the day (maybe I should have taken physics). Instead all it did was make my friend start screaming at the top of her lungs (she could not see said spider and thought I had lost my mind). I, too, started screaming because she was screaming and also because I had a spider crawling in my shorts! [If you ever happen to be in this situation I do not recommend this as a reasonable reaction.]
I’m pretty sure in the end it turned out to be a black fuzzy.

But just recently for the first time in my life I have found a cute spider. He lives behind the key pad of our home alarm system in the basement. Every day on my way out I see him sitting there and as soon as he hears me beeping the buttons he scurries behind the box like he’s been found out. And every day I come home and he’s back in his spot and we repeat the charade and I pretend not to see him because he’s my little fuzzy friend. It’s kind of a little game we have going. Well, sadly tonight I came home and my spider buddy was not there. They say the average life expectancy of a house spider is 3 years. Maybe he didn’t make it that long; or maybe he just took up residence somewhere else. I hope he’s happy where ever he is.
As long as it’s not my bedroom...
then he’d be a dead spider.