Halloween is upon us, and of this I have had first-hand experience. Earlier this evening, I strolled innocently into my bedroom to put away my Puffs tissues. I crossed the threshold and saw, squatting in the middle of my floor, the biggest spider I have ever seen in real life, outside of exhibits at the zoo. In fact, this spider probably escaped from a zoo somewhere. It was, I swear on my brother’s life, as big as my fist.
Because at 22, I am a confident, poised woman, I immediately let loose a blood-curdling scream and jumped about 10 feet into the air and 3 feet backwards, tissues and cold medicine flying everywhere.
Two of my roommates, H and J, were in the other room. They asked bemusedly what had happened and then doubted my (admittedly hysterical) claim that the biggest spider in the world was in my room. The two of them came down the hall and, of course, instantly replicated my reaction: high-pitched screaming, jumping in the air, eyes as big as saucers. At least this is what I assume their response was, because by this point I had put as much distance as possible between the thing and me and was several rooms away.
All three of us were too scared to try to step on it with our shoes, so for some reason I attempted to trap it under a cup. Why, I’m not sure, because there was no way any of us were going to try to take the thing outside. I think my reasoning was that if I trapped the spider, and knew where it was, I could then safely approach and just cede my bedroom to it as a peace offering, while I lived somewhere else for the rest of the term.
Needless to say, I aimed for the spider but missed (I think the normal-sized plastic cup was too small to trap it), and the thing scurried under my dresser. In my poor aim, I managed to take off one of its legs. This, as it turned out, was a bad thing, because it emphasized the size of the creature — the leg was the length of one of my fingers. It wasn’t long legged like daddy long-legs, either, which are cute and harmless and always remind me of elderly people for some reason. This spider was big and moved kind of like a crab but also hopped slightly like a grasshopper, which is a creepy combination of attributes.
We were at a loss. I wasn’t about to go looking under the dresser for the thing while it was thirsting for vengeance for its amputated leg. My roommates were even more chicken than I was — J had tears in her eyes at the thought of facing the creature herself — so we did the only logical thing we could. Because we are three independent women, fully capable of taking care of ourselves, we called our guy friend R who had left the house about five minutes earlier, so that HE could come kill it.
A few minutes later R walked into my room, shoe in hand, ready to kill the spider. In our defense, after he saw the size of the amputated leg, he said, “Ummm, okay, maybe I should put my shoe back on and get something bigger to hit it with …” Surprisingly enough, he didn’t feel the need to shriek like we had.
When R first moved the dresser to locate the spider, the thing limped back under the dresser to hide. R had to spend a good five minutes moving my dresser back and forth to find it, because the spider was not just big; it was intelligent, too. Rather than staying on the floor, scuttling around underneath the furniture like a normal spider, it suspended itself from the bottom of the dresser so R couldn’t see it.
This was cunning, but R soon realized the spider’s scheme. I am happy to say that it is now dead as a door nail and my room is once again my own, though I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes there since, and this was four or five hours ago …
H, J and I could have faced our fears and killed the spider-creature if we really had to, I suppose. Luckily for us, though, we didn’t have to. I have a lot of fears like that — I could deal with them if I had to, but if I can avoid that, it’s okay. There are other fears I have, though, too: I’m afraid of making myself vulnerable in relationships and of attempting things academically and vocationally at which my success is not guaranteed. These sorts of things I will never be forced to face unless I decide to, so the question is, how do I decide to face my fears when I can so easily run away/cede my bedroom? I’m not sure.
On a less troubling note, Happy Halloween! Hopefully yours is less frightening than mine has been and filled with candy.
—Leigh Dickey is a senior in global studies and Latin. She can be reached at [email protected].
