It started this morning when I was taking my kids out to a park. Their mother was at school, interviewing a prospective new teacher (her misadventures in this area could form a wacky post in their own right, but she can make her own damn blog.) So I took the two kids, aged 6 and 4 (I know, right?) to a park to play.
Side note: This is the single best thing about being a teacher. Forget that whole "reaching kids and molding new minds;" having summers off so that I can take my kids to the park on a weekday is the absolute fucking best.
Normally, I prefer to take the kids to the "Lizard Park," which is our name for the park just south of us, located on the Intercoastal Waterway. It has a little playground with that super safe spongy rubbery material on the ground (which I like because it feels nice on the feet of old parents, forget about any safety concerns,) and a nature walk that goes right out over the water, in front of a little natural scrub area where the kids can watch the tiny crabs play. Being located in the heart of old folks territory, it is sparsely attended, and often we are the only ones there. Also there are a profusion of lizards, hence its nickname. It is the best.
But naturally, my kids didn't want to go there. They want to go to the "Pittle Park," so named because we once went there with our friends the Pittles. Now this is a great park, with lots of space and plenty of playground equipment. And the whole thing is canopied with shade trees , creating a cool respite from the morning heat, with many metal benches for parents. I love this park as well.
But the problem is that this fine park is not located in old folks territory; it is located in the middle of town, and plenty of people like to bring their (naturally inferior because they are not mine,) children there to play. So it tends to be crowded and chaotic. This would not normally be a big deal, except that in the summer, busloads of kids from day camp show up, and a horde of 'big kids' swarm all over and make it difficult for little ones to play safely. There have been many time that I have shown up to find no parking spaces available, even without the buses.
So normally, I tell them we can't go, and drive straight to the Lizard Park. But today, they begged more than normal, so I made them a deal; I would drive to the park and see if it was too crowded. If so, we would go to the Lizard Park, and there would be no whining (there's always whining.) It meant driving in the opposite direction for a while, but what the Hell.
When we got to the Pittle Park, it was empty. I don't mean 'sparsely attended,' I mean the only vehicles there were the city maintenance guys who cut the grass (they were on break.) Well this was a rare opportunity so we hopped out of the car to see how long we could have the park to ourselves. As the kids headed towards the see saw, I pointed out some spider webs in the little tree in the parking lot. These were the creations of spiny orb weavers, which are all over our part of Florida.
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| This cute little guy |
Now these guys are tiny, and one generally only sees their brightly colored carapace in the circular webs they spin. The important thing about this species (outside their ubiquity,) is that they do not 'activate' my arachnophobia. Like all phobias, it doesn't make any logical sense. For whatever reason, when I see one of these little guys, they just look cute, and the kids and I just talk about them clinically and go about our day.
So I didn't even concern myself with them and took a seat on a bench to watch the kids. Now, even though I was not thinking about spiders, my senses still overreact whenever I feel anything brush against me. So when I felt something on the back of my head when I sat down, I leaped up instantly, running my hand over my hair. I laughed at myself for being so silly, and was thankful that there was no one else around to laugh at my ridiculous overreaction. I figured it was probably a fly or bug that buzzed by me, and looked around for it. Then I noticed a strand of webbing attached to the bench. That was what I had brushed against. But since I had seen the spiny orb weavers, I was not overly panicked or anything. I sort of chuckled again, in an almost 'oh you silly little guys' attitude.
Then I looked up.
Following the strand of webbing I found a large web built by an entirely different species of spider:
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| THIS motherfucker. |
That there is a nephila spider, a species of Golden Silk Orb Weaver, one member of the species commonly called 'banana spiders.' They grow to the size of human hand, and they spin massive webs solely for the purpose of entangling arachnophobes (citation needed.)
This thing was staring down at me with eight eyes full of malice. These are my number one least favorite species of spider, and the number three reason I want to move the hell out of Florida (number one is the heat, and as for number two, you know who you are.)
So now my phobia was activated. As I've mentioned before, the thing about a phobia is that I'm not afraid of spiders per se. I am fully aware that I have nothing whatsoever to fear from these mindless creatures, and that not only would such a creature do everything in its power to avoid any contact with me, but even if it were hell-bent on violence towards me, it could do no more damage than a mosquito bite. There is no logical reason to fear such spiders, and a normal human being would have ignored the silent presence of this beneficial animal.
But I am not a normal human being; I have a specific form of brain damage. I explain the phenomenon of having a phobia like this: you know when you see something that threatens you, like an angry dog, or a car careening towards you, or maniac wielding lawn equipment, and your body floods you with adrenaline and 'run away' juice? That's what happens when I see a spider; my body reacts as if I was in danger. And just like when you just barely avoid a car accident or run away from an angry dog or maniac, you get all keyed up and its hard to relax. When I have an 'incident' of arachnophobia, that's how it feels. Once I see a spider I'm on hyper-alert, and I can't calm down.
I use terms like 'activate my phobia,' or an 'incident' of arachnophobia because it sounds ridiculously over dramatic to say I had an 'attack' of arachnophobia. 'Attacks' are what people with serious conditions get, and they are no fun from what I hear. They are not momentary freak-outs that give you some discomfort, they are genuine mental breaks that interrupt your normal functioning and ruin your whole day.
Today I had an attack of arachnophobia.
"Over one lousy spider?" you ask, sitting comfortable and smug as you read this. Well no, not from one lousy spider as you will see if you give me a damn minute to finish the story you insensitive jerk (God, you can be such an ass some times.)
No, at first I was simply freaked out, which is normal. I calmly backed away from the bench and went over to where the kids were playing. I started looking around for another bench since I'm pretty sure I've developed a heel spur in my right foot recently, and needed to sit down. I walked over to the two benches that are back to back in the middle and then stopped.
As my position shifted, the sunlight glinted off the weblines that anchored to the backs of these benches as well. Following them up (I know, I know,) I spotted more of the hated nephila spiders claiming these seats as their own. I started to become discomfited by this, but I kept my cool mostly. I moved deeper into the park following the kids, extremely wary of any webs that might obstruct me. Arthur wanted help on the balancing thingy, so I handed Grace the bottle of water and my notepad (I write while the kids are playing.) When he was done playing, I noticed Grace was empty handed. When I asked her where she had put the stuff, she pointed to the last bench.
This was a dilemma. Perhaps this bench would be different. And my foot had begun to hurt. And my stuff was there. Right there. On that inviting bench. So I moved carefully forward. Now if you can, try to picture this; here I am, a grown man standing in the middle of a playground on a sunny day, inching forward towards a bench sitting on the edge of the park as if I feared it were an IED. My kids continued to play around me, oblivious to the existential horror that gripped their father.
And then I saw it. There was, of course, yet another obscenely large spider using the back of this bench as an anchoring point for its web of evil. I was a good twenty feet away, and I still saw it, hanging unnaturally in space high above. I was seized with the need to document this.
Can you see it? If you look at the round tree in the middle of the picture, track upwards.you will see a tiiiiny black speck jut below the cloud. That's it. That's the creature that tipped me onto the downward slope of insanity. I realize it does not look too big to you, but that's because the photo does not do it justice, and because your brain is not damaged.
I could not move. I stood in the open clearing, feeling completely trapped. But even then, as my breathing began to get a little erratic, and my chest started feeling a little tight, I was in control. I could just stand here, watching the kids, doing my dadly duties, ignoring my aching foot, and maintaining my cool. All I had to do was stand there and not keep looking around.
God-damned phobia.
I could not help looking around the tops of the trees, like one of those hapless fools in a horror movie who insist on checking out that noise in the basement. And I don't need to tell you what I found.
Florida in the summertime is very hot and wet (shit, Florida is hot and wet in every season, but summer is just moreso.) Consequently, flying insects proliferate. This means a nearly inexhaustible food supply for spiders, and any biologist will tell you that when you have an abundant food supply, the population of predators will similarly explode to insane amounts.
The treetops were rife with webs. You can't see them at first, but the glittering lines of silk become visible as the light shifts, and then you see their sinister architects hanging in mid air, suspended above you like hideous satellites, gazing down upon you like capricious gods, ready to deliver judgments of terror upon you, descending upon strands of thread like eight-legged swords of Damocles.
This is when I had a full-on attack.
At this point I need to tell you the rest of the story. Because I know you may think me a complete pussy for breaking down just because there were a bunch of harmless spiders in the tree tops above me, but there's something you do not realize: this was a nightmare. I don't mean to liken it to the kind of situation that one would experience in a nightmare, the way we describe traffic or a large amount of paperwork as a nightmare (if you actually do have bad dreams about traffic and paperwork, you may have serious problems.) I mean to say that this situation is literally my nightmare.
I am not a person who is habitually plagued by bad dreams, but I do have them from time to time, as nearly everyone does. But my dreams, almost without exception, are always about the same thing. It should come as no surprise to you that they involve spiders, but they are always painfully specific as to the details.
Every nightmare I have involves me being in some place, some place that is densely packed with objects, be they trees, or pillars, or piles of old furniture or cave walls, but an area that leaves little open space. In the nightmare, I must navigate this area. But as I attempt this, I notice a spider web blocking my progress, a spider suspended in the center of it. I can't see the web or the spider at first, and only right before I walk into it do they come into focus. I back up cautiously and seek an alternate route, but time and time again I find myself thwarted, my attempts to escape stymied by the continuing discovery of more and more arachnids and their silken demesnes. In the end, I can move nowhere, trapped like a fly in... well, you know.
The nightmare ends when I wake up. There is no resolution, I simply awaken, creeped out and harrowed. But today, I found myself trapped in this nightmare, unable to awake, locked inside my own subconscious' darkest scenario.
This was seriously uncool.
I did not scream, I did not fetal up (the ground is mulch, and you just know there are spiders in there,) and I did not, NOT lose my cool. I had my panic attack like a gentleman; with stuff upper lip and quivering sanity. What I did do was to calmly inform the children that we could not stay. I told them that Daddy was having an attack of arachnophobia, and that we had to fall back to the extraction point using flamethrowers, and reminded them to fire in short, controlled bursts (but then again, I always advise them that.) I told Grace to walk over to the bench and get our things (you shut the hell up! She's not arachnophobic, and I already told you there was no good reason to fear spiders.)
We calmly packed up and walked back to the car at an even pace, head bobbing slightly to try and use the sunlight to pick up any trace of spider silk that might block the way, and not looking back to see if the things were following us.
Like a grown-up.
We got in the car, where I had a nice breathe and drank some water, and then we drove to the Lizard Park. We had a lovely time, and I only saw one web there, occupied by a friendly spiny orb weaver, who got a "you're okay, man" nod from me.
I cannot say if I will ever be able to return to the Pittle Park (which may have to be renamed,) and I am not especially proud of this incident. I pride myself on being a good parent, and on always putting the needs of my kids before my own comfort, but I failed at that today. I could have stayed of course, rooted to the spot in stark terror, foot aching, as every little rustling noise ate into my mental well-being (fucking squirrels,) but I don't know if that really would have been the best for my kids. No one wants to be the kid at school whose dad has PTSD over garden pests, so maybe the Lizard Park was the best choice, who can say?
In the calm light of my home, and with many intervening hours to provide perspective, it is easy to laugh it off, but this is one of the worst kind of experiences; the kind where the impact upon you is so laughably out of proportion with the seriousness, and which end up just making you look the fool.
I wonder if I will dream tonight.
