Phobia

Picture from the most recent blog post on "Hyperbole and a Half"

In my sickened homebodied state, I watched a show called "My outrageous animal phobia" or something along those lines, where people with a crazy animal phobia that is overtaking their lives seek help from a therapist. This particular therapist also helps some of the people on Hoarders, so I guess we can approve of her credentials. One of the clients on the show has a phobia of spiders so bad that she won't even play at the park with her children because there have to be spiders in the dirt and grass.

At first I was like, "Wow she is really letting this ruin her life," and then all the sudden I was reminded of that one time that I said, "Even if someone offered me $45 million dollars, I wouldn't lay in a box of tarantulas for even one second." I have a serious problem you guys, and that's a lot of money. For example, a few weeks ago I went out to my car at lunch and drove to the grocery store. While I was at a stop light, I noticed a jumping spider the size of a quarter sitting on my wiper blade. I jumped a little, but thought to myself 'This is no big deal, he will fly off while I drive, and if I turn on the wiper blades he's history'.

Then when I get to the grocery store, he's still there and he's proving his skills as a jumping spider quite well. He jumped from the hood of my car to the roof in one perfect leap, and even nailed the landing. It was quite impressive. I take a couple deep breaths and try to ignore the morbid visions in my head of him waiting for me while I shop, and then hiding in my hair and crawling out while I'm driving, which then forces me head on into traffic where I get in a massive car accident. Yeah, a little irrational, I am well aware of this fact.

I go grocery shopping for 20 minutes. When I come out, I can't find him anywhere. So I give a little fist pump and happily drive away knowing I am spider-free, which is the way to be. Well, while I'm driving he appears on my windshield, and began to taunt me. If his spider voice weren't too tiny to hear, he would have said, "I'M SITTING HERE PATIENTLY WAITING FOR YOU. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" or, "Look how sticky I am, I won't ever come off of this windshield no matter how fast you drive, and this stickiness means that if I jump on you, I'll never come off of you, EVER!!!!" So I say to him, "Spider you suck, and you better fall off my car or I'll kill you." I say this knowing full well that I am terrified of him and his Olympic jumping skills where he can long jump 300 times his body length and that I'm probably NOT going to attempt his murder knowing he'll jump on me and I'll have a heart attack and die. I'm too young to die.

So, during this time, my boyfriend calls me and our conversation distracts me a little from the spider (not completely, I never lose track of a spider that I know is in my vicinity, until it's dead). When I park back at work, I say to him, "Babe, I'm kind of scared to get out of the car, I can't see him, and he might get in my hair." He was so patient with me, bless his heart for dating a crazy girl. I get the courage to get out after a minute and see where he is. He's on the other side of my car, sitting by the door handle. The stupid jerk. He knew my sweet and sour sauce for my egg rolls had fallen under the seat and I needed to open that door to get it. I could almost hear him saying, "ENJOY YOUR DRY SAUCELESS EGG ROLLS YOU BIG PANSY."

Like the wuss that I am, I went inside without the sauce. Justin, trying not to be disappointed in me for being such a baby (even though he should be), tells me to find a guy in my office to kill it so I can start breathing again. I go find a sales guy across the hall (there's a million men over there with big egos that would love to help a damsel in distress). We go out there, he finds the spider, and enjoys rubbing salt in my already embarrassed wounds. His immediate reaction was, "This little guy? I thought I was coming out to kill a big cool spider". He immediately flicks it with his finger and I see it run off into the weeds. I wish I could do that.

Yes, America, I AM AN ARACHNOPHOBE. I realize I'm kind of an idiot. I'm sure he went back to his office and told all the guys how wussy that blonde girl from Events is, even though I told him to keep it between us. Oh well, you win some, you lose some... and embarrass yourself.

So I'm watching the show today about phobias and the girl with the spider phobia had to work up to holding spiders. She first had to decorate her bedroom with a million spider photos (I would've itched my brains out all night, and had a massive spider nightmare). Then she had to stick her face up to a giant tarantula in a glass case, look him in the eyes for a minute and then sleep with one in her room in a terrarium. No biggie, I can handle that... maybe.

The final exposure therapy tool was the worst. She had to move 10 tarantulas of different sizes from one glass case to another, and let a few of them crawl all over her hands. At first she did what I would do and panicked. Then she faced her fear and did it. At first she sounded like she was having a panic attack, but then got better at it. I had a pet tarantula when I was 6. I don't recall ever holding it, but I kept it in my room despite my mom's aversion to having it in the house, and we fed it grasshoppers. I'm not sure at what point in my life my fear developed but I'd really love to overcome it. I hope to someday zipline through a jungle, and I don't want to be terrified of all the giant webs I may have to run into, and back out of one of my bucket list items.

Maybe I will go hold a tarantula one of these days. I actually kind of want to. I think it would make me feel like I was on top of the world!

(Note to my friends, if anyone forces me to do this before I am ready, I will blame you for my untimely death by heart attack.)

What are some of your phobias?