Sitting happily in my sandbox at age 2 when a horde of them hatched and crawled all over me did it.

I guess the upside of that would be that no one could ever justly accuse them of being tight-assed.

That’s kind of like fearing a bug will crawl up your ass while you sleep.

I think I know some people who that has happened to.

My mom told me once that we’re never more than 8 feet from a spider. Thanks, mom! (shudder)

OK, I will shut up now.

That made me spew partially-masticated sweet ripe cantaloupe all over my desk. Don’t forget to insert your buttplugs at bedtime.

Spiders don’t ickle me at all. Because of the cats, my house isn’t exactly spider-friendly. Out near the clothesline, I’ve seen some large lovely orange-red ones. They spin the prettiest, most complicated-looking, HUGE webs, all the better to catch flying beasties like mosquitoes. This makes them most welcome in my yard.

Actually, per usual, it’s all your mother’s fault:

http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/application.html

“Fears such as arachnophobia originate in early childhood. They are often a representation of an object from childhood that that caused distress. Because the parents, typically the mother, are such a major part of a child’s development, this is often the first place we would look. We would explore their childhood, discuss their dreams, and analyze their relationships, including the therapeutic relationship. Through this analysis we may discover that the fear of spiders actually represents a fear of castration.

“Seeing one’s mother as powerful and able to take away the power of a child is anxiety provoking. This fear is therefore repressed into the unconscious. It may no longer be recognized but always surfaces in other ways. In this case, it has surfaced as a fear of spiders since anything stuck in a spider’s web is helpless and powerless, just like the client felt as a child with his mother.

“Once we understand how the fear developed, we can use various techniques to cure the client. One technique might be re-parenting, or perhaps further analysis to create insight into the disorder. By fully understanding and overcoming the true feared object (the mother) we can cure the client of the displaced fear (the spider). Without this understanding, fixing the conscious fear of spiders will only result in the real fear coming out in a different manner.”

Of course, the standard is male (fear of castration) although we are supposed to feel included because “he” means women also, right?

“Because the parents, typically the mother, are such a major part of a child’s development, this is often the first place we would look.”

Often?! What’s the fancy name for the boys’ fear of parenting since they subconsciously know they will be blamed for every nutcase in the world just as mothers are made responsible for every ill?”

Spiders have free reign at my place. They all have first names with Ocho as their last name; Susie Ocho for instance. She lives in the bathroom. I just knock down their dusty webs when the spirit moves me, which is not all that often.

The black widow living in my well house is Viuda Negra Ocho, Vi for short. Of course, the boy who came out to fix the pump looked at me like I was out of my mind when I told him to leave Vi be, but after one has gotten that look six million times in her long life, it loses its punch.

Right now there’s a big gray spider living somewhere on my computer desk. I call her Charlotte and try to keep her out of reach of the cats. Haven’t seen her in a while, so I hope my attempts have not been in vain.

Part of my reason for liking spiders comes from the novel ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ Yes, it’s anthropomorphic, but if that’s what it takes to make some people sympathetic to the crawly little cuties, so be it. The recent movie of it is pretty good too.

By the way, I have a friend who had to go to the hospital for an allergic reaction to a spider bite, so I don’t blame her at all for freaking out at the sight of them. Even she has come around to the point where she evicts them rather than killing them. Spiders do us, as a species, a great deal more good than harm. Even the poisonous ones that try to crawl up our vaginas.