In all the times I have watched the movie Charlotte’s Web growing up, I have never been left with a feeling of friendship or love towards any creature with eight hairy legs. The first time I watched the film was when I was four. I had just started going to preschool and was the youngest in my class. Because of that, a little brat of a child, Toby, decided he was going to pick on me each and every day. While the whole class had sat down on blankets and prepared to watch the film, Toby had snuck over to the class window and was snooping around the plant that was parked on the windowsill. It didn’t take the teacher long to realize he had strayed, but the damage was already done. Not even ten minutes into the movie I reached down to grab a handful of popcorn and there it was: a daddy long leg crawling down my arm from my shoulder. It’s a good thing I was so quick at that age. I rocketed off the floor and was running around and shaking. I might as well have stopped, dropped, and rolled to get the thing off me. Toby had found a spider in that plant and thought it a good idea to share him with me. How sweet of the little devil.

Since that day, my perception of spiders has never been the same. They can virtually show up anywhere and out of nowhere. When I first notice a small clod of dirt on the floor in the kitchen, it just has to be a spider. I approach the clod with a heavy shoe in hand only to be greeted with delirious relief that there isn’t really a spider crawling around my kitchen. Their reflexes are far better than any humans. When I try to kill a spider, I never know which way it is going to dart. I always assume with my luck it will end up flying on top of me and crawling around like the spider Toby gave me. The thought of eight fuzzy legs as thick as pencil led scurrying on my body is almost enough to put me in a padded room. When I walk into a spider web on a breezy day, it is all but over for me. For hours after my mind races—contemplating the possibility that thousands of spider eggs have taken up a nest in my hair and will hatch when I least expect it. Every hair displaced from my head is an extension of that web, and wraps me into the constant uneasiness about the creatures, and how they will forever have the element of surprise over me.

Halloween is typically the most difficult time of year for me. Images of spiders from creepy to cute are plastered on every holiday ad, website, or television commercial. Arachnophobia is obviously the fear of spiders, and on my list of fears, arachnids rank higher than getting hit by a train while driving over railroad tracks and flunking out of college. However, my anxiety stems mostly from when and how I will stumble upon their menacing presence. As I’ve grown older, I’ve rationalized that as long as I’m equipped with a sturdy work boot and adequate amount of space to kill them, I can manage the courage to bear the scoundrels. I remind myself with every encounter how thankful I am that spiders can’t fly. But when I get comfortable with performing my daily habits, my activities, or going about my week, it seems one crawls out of nowhere, stopping me dead in my tracks. The time between spiders is never long enough.

My first day of kindergarten was full of finger painting, playing tag on the playground, and of course, meeting my first Charlotte. Mrs. Foreman blew her whistle to reign us in from our play to come eat our sack lunches that our mommies had all packed with great care. We all raced to the tree we had piled our lunch boxes by. At the very bottom of the pile, I spotted my Barney and Baby Bop bag. As I tried and pulled as hard as I could to free my lunch from the pile, the zipper eventually became unzippered and the contents of my lunchbox were all over the place. As I scrambled through my meal gone wrong, I remembered back to what mommy had packed me. First, a cherry Caprisun with a now missing straw. Next, a half peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with grape jelly because I was allergic to strawberries. There was one bright green apple that had rolled farther away from my pack than any ball I had ever played with. Last, a Hershey’s Kiss, because mom wanted to remind me in the middle of the day how much she loved me. I grabbed each item and threw it in the bag for Barney to carry and ran to catch up with the other kids heading inside to the lunch room.

Of course, I took my rightful seat next to all the other girls and started to unpack my goodies. Kiss… drink… sandwich… apple. All present and accounted for. With mom in mind, I started to reach for my apple. She said to always start with fruit. As the apple came closer and closer to my face my eyes narrowed in on where I’d place my first bite. My friend Shawna’s eyes grew bigger when crawling around to the top of the apple was a nickel-size, hairy black spider. She screamed. I screamed. We all screamed. I threw the apple at the wall as hard as I could. Being a kindergartener, the impact didn’t kill Charlotte. I had to watch as she climbed up the wall and took refuge behind the clock. To make matters worse, the scene I caused with no proof of Charlotte earned me a 15-minute time out. So marks the second event in the time between spiders.

As time progressed, I had always hoped that my fear would die out. For three years, I had avoided any major tragedies involving spiders. However, when I was eight, I began having a recurring nightmare that stayed with me for several weeks. Over and over again I dreamt of getting off the bus after school, walking up to the front entrance of my house, and the entire door being laced with dense webs covered in garden spiders. The black and yellow Argiope is a gardener’s friend. However, their moderate size, thin spindly legs, and thick abdomen stamped with an interesting, speckled, yellow pattern, gives the appearance of anything but a friend. For years, they took up shop on all sides of our barn. (Especially the side containing all of my mother’s failed attempts at having a successful garden.) Nevertheless, I didn’t have to worry about them. I could keep my safe distance and stay inside the house. But when hundreds of them creep into your dreams and prevent you from entering the one place where you should feel most safe, it can be traumatic. Towards the end of my recurrence with the nightmare, I was starting to reach my breaking point.

After waking up in the middle of the night after the dream, I frantically made my way from my room to relieve my nervous bladder. I slammed the door behind me as I entered the bathroom. There was plenty of light to debunk the chance of any spider creeping up on me. The second I sat down, though, my worst fears were realized. On the floor right behind the door I had just shut was a fist-sized, hairy, midnight-black, tarantula! To me, each leg looked just as large as my index finger. Me being frightened, I did what any eight-year-old girl would do at the sight of that beast—I screamed bloody-murder at the top of my lungs waiting on my parents to save me. One long, loud, high-pitched squeal that stretched on for what felt like an eternity. I could hear my heart pounding inside my ears. A hurried throbbing almost sent me into shock. Finally, my parents burst into the bathroom to my rescue. “Mom, quick! There’s a spider behind the door!” I watched in terror as she slowly moved the door back towards the jam. To my uneasy heart there was no spider to be found. My parents began interrogating me on the appearance of the spider, only to realize there is no possible way for a tarantula to call East Central Illinois home. My eyes were playing tricks on me. A fear so warped and twisted that my mind had conjured a beast up to literally scare the pee out of me. After this event, would there even be a time between spiders? Or would they pose a consistent presence and never leave?

I couldn’t trust my classmates, I couldn’t trust my dreams, I couldn’t trust my eyes, I couldn’t trust myself. Spiders had crawled into my life and woven a tight web around my nervous heart. I had been traumatized into a state of keeping to myself more. Things got so bad that I lost all of my friends except for three. (One of which was my cousin and she really had no choice in the matter.) I thought that if I reduced the amount of people I associated with, my chances of being blindsided by my fear would also go away. It seemed like spiders would appear just when I was happiest. If I was able to eliminate my happiness, maybe the spiders would vanish too.

Spiders for me had almost become my kryptonite. If I ever had the opportunity to outgrow my fear and move on with my life, one would drop down from the ceiling and place itself right in front of my face. Five years later, when I had reached the ever-mature teen years, Charlotte decided she wanted to drop by and help me celebrate my thirteenth birthday. For this special age, my dad got me a beautiful blue and yellow go-cart. My years of playing MarioKart on Nintendo 64 had come to life before my very eyes. He even got me a matching, bright canary yellow safety suit and helmet. I was going to live life on the edge. I was basically a race car driver. My dad unveiled the gift at my Grandpa Chuck’s house in a neighboring town. Sadly, that’s where the cart would stay for the remainder of this summer. The only thing stopping me from hopping inside that day was the impending thunderstorm that the month of June is known for conjuring up on a whim. I would be driving it soon enough, I just needed to be patient.

About a week later my opportunity had finally arrived. My first spin around my Grandpa’s yard started as an absolute blast to say the least. I was zipping and winding through the twenty or more trees in his back yard. I was faster than his German Shepard that was running alongside. I was the apple of his eye and making him so proud by being able to wield a motorized vehicle. I planned to impress him with my smooth maneuver of cutting it really close to a strip of rosebushes and veering away at the last second. I could handle it. I was getting better with every second, right? As I approached the bushes teeming with confidence, a tiny black speck came into my line of sight. It wasn’t Rammal the German Shepard—I had left him in the dust three minutes ago. Low and behold crawling down on the inside of my helmet was Charlotte. I did what any good driver would do. Break down like a little girl and lose all focus of what I was doing. As I stripped off my helmet when I needed it most, I slammed front first into the rose bush. Scratches covered my face and tore little holes in my suit. Not to mention the possibility of how many spiders had fallen out of the bush onto me during impact. I unbuckled myself and went running as far as I could away from the cart. I fell on the ground because my balance was off so bad. Never again would I buckle in for a fun ride. The time between spiders is never long enough.

So I’ll walk on eggshells until next time. My eyes are trained to spot every different size, shape, texture, color, and mannerisms. Each image I see bringing back every horrible experience I’ve had with the mongrels. I’m left to wonder when exactly the next traumatic event will arise. Is there a formula I can use to calculate when I will be taken by surprise and put face to face with my biggest fear embodied in an insect? It’s became more than a phobia for me—it’s always on my mind. They are always on my mind. Charlotte is always on my mind. I’ll continue about my week and pretend like nothing is going to happen. I’ll go about my day like everything is normal. I’ll distance myself from the things and people that make me the happiest to keep them away. However, in the bottom of my heart, I can feel the steady tick of a bomb coinciding with the beat of my heart. There is clearly a time between spiders, and I will always be on the clock.

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