Once, in a group chat, I was asked why I do not like spiders. Thus was my reply:
Well, back in 3rd grade I had lots of friends, an active social life, even a bit of 8yo romance. I had it all. My life was perfect. Every day I would wake up, drink my morning coffee, do the homework I hadn't finished the night before, eat breakfast, and be driven to school in my dad's Pontiac Trans-Am, an old sports car from a generation between ours. One night, before I went to bed, there was a spider in my room. I was ok with that, I could handle them back then. I went to get a paper towel to send him up the golden staircase, but he saw where I was headed and scurried off. He was gone Later that night, I was almost asleep, when I heard a voice. A small, spindly voice that only could have come from a creature with book lungs. I was too tired to understand what he was trying to say, but that's right, the spider was talking to me. I ignored it, thinking I'd just drank too much apple juice earlier. Until he returned the next night, and the next. Finally, after about a week of this pre-sleep whispering going on, I realized something was up. So the next night, instead of falling asleep at the normal time, I stayed up and listened. Here's what I heard: "Stop squishing us, we have souls too. do you know how many times we've watched you flush our relatives down toilets? do you know how many time we've had to console our young because daddy's not coming back?" minute by minute, he slowly won me over. I have to see how our species had been locked in an unfair battle since the dawn of time, when a spider startled Eve by falling in her tea. So I changed Instead of squishing spiders, I let them build webs in my room. Since we live next to a farm and reality is the fourth plague of Egypt, they really helped out with keeping insect populations down. I let them build all over the house, and tried to defend or move them whenever anyone else in the house found them with cruel intentions. And life stayed peaceful, until I made a mistake I was too engrossed in a book one day (I'd just gotten to the first kiss scene, like FINALLY after all these years he let her know how he felt) and I didn't hear my mom discovering a baby spider. I didn't hear its frantic, small cries for me to intervene, I was younger, and far more foolish then. I didn't hear the crunch as his small body failed him When I was told what had happened and informed of my mistake, I felt TERRIBLE. I was responsible! At the funeral (there was no corpse, as it had been flushed before I could rescue it) his grieving father threatened me. I apologized profusely, but he was not satisfied. He swore he would take my life for taking his son's. This worried me to no small degree, as he had significant political power amongst the spiders in my house, who were now more in number than they'd ever been That night I slept lightly and little. The next day, I understood the full horror of his plan He wasn't going to kill me, no, that would spell the end of the safety the spiders still had. I went to bed, only to discover the spiders had, in no small effort, filled it with dirt under the covers. This continued in other ways at home, like a whole carton of eggs suddenly having cracks, all my morning coffee beans suddenly disappearing, etc. One even hitched along with be to school and bit me repeatedly during the end-of-year presentation that was weighed heavily in my grades. I started slipping in my classes, in my social life...I couldn't keep it up. Something had to change. So I shared it with my girlfriend of two months, which was a lot in 8th grade. Surprisingly, she believed me! I offered lots of proof and examples, and she listened! She started coming over after school to help me with homework and make sure I was ok, as the spiders wouldn't touch her. They were exact and relentless in their revenge. We got closer than ever as a result of my torture, and I again found some source of happiness in my life. Until the spiders realized that too... And changed their tactics. For a couple weeks, they stopped! I thought they'd forgiven me, and let bygones be bygones. Little did I know, they were working on a massive project in the attic. spiders from all rooms of the house and all walks of of life had come together, and the result wasn't good. See, Sheila was arachnophobic. So far, she hadn't seen any spiders in my house, but the occasional web set her on end. She was strong for me, though, and I loved her for it. This was dynamite knowledge in the spiders' "hands" or whatever they have. The last day she came over was the worst. Because the spiders had made their move. I had let my guard down... Big mistake. She was leaving, and we decided we wanted to kiss each other (yes, we had taken cues from disney and gotten to that point). It would be the first time I'd ever kissed and same for her. We leaned in like they did on tv, I closed my eyes, and that's when she screamed. I opened my eyes very fast and hard, straining my eyelid muscles, and what met my gaze was hideous. The biggest, fattest, ugliest spider I'd ever seen was hanging down between us, leg all wiggling and cepholothorax twitching. I made a manly sound, which happened to be higher and louder than hers, and we pulled apart quickly. the spider dropped to the porch, and Sheila turned and ran...straight into a tripwire web that the spiders had strung across the stairs. I thought surely she would split her head open on the concrete, but more or less luckily she fell into a massive tangle of cobwebs and spiders that somehow, I hadn't noticed before. It broke her fall with lots of spiderwebby noises. I ran to her aid after putting an old milk container porch decoration over the Big Spider (which was probably the most use it had ever gotten), only for my one-track mind to fall victim to the same tripwire. I fell hard and on top of her, and we both writhed around in the webs and were bitten many times by spiders attacking from all sides. We finally struggled free, and we brushed off hard and ran. Once we were satisfied that there were no more spiders on us, we sat down to talk. She liked me, but she could not be my associate anymore. What had just happened was likely the most stressful thing to ever happen to her again, and now we knew that she, too, wasn't safe. I begged her to reconsider, cried and told her I'd make it work, but she said no. It broke me. It broke both of us, in a way. I then vowed my revenge on the spiders for hurting me worse than if they'd just cut my wrists and gotten it over with. She was all I had left. Id left my social life behind a month ago, same with everything else that brought me pleasure. The harassment was simply too much for me to bear. I would have committed suicide, but my fury drove me to stay alive, if only to kill. Instead of going home, I walked to home depot. They pointed me out to Bug-B-Gone™ pest management. I walked in the door with the craziest story they'd ever heard, but when I got home, the proof was all there. Seven days later not one spider remained in my house. all orifices were sealed, there was no point of entry under the floors or in the walls. The doors remained workable, as did the windows, but we installed the best of spider-killing and -repelling technology. I never saw Sheila again. But I had my revenge. Eventually my life recovered. Finally I got back some semblance of reality So, when you ask why I hate spiders, this is why. They destroyed me, took away years of my innocent childhood. Now please, never ask again.
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