How the Fear of Spiders Affects My Life

So how does it affect your life? The way it affects my life is the following-

I do a good amount of outdoor work, such as stacking and moving around firewood. And what do you know, but spiders, especially the big hairy ones (shudder) like to hang out in wood stacks! Normally, I can go about my buisness moving wood pretty fearlessly, but as soon as I see a spider, whammo, I’m in a complex. I go around for the rest of the wood stacking period picking up pieces of wood by the fingertips, ready to drop them at a seconds notice. I carefully examine the pieces before picking them up, expecting the worse. Most of the time, thankfully, I don’t get the worse, which would be one of those suckers to step onto my hand. Which is probably a good thing for them, because it would be presto! a shooting spider (or pancaked spider, depending on how my nerves were feeling).

And of course another way it affects my life would be….friends. Like how many people would laugh at a big, muscular fellow that was afraid of spider? Joking, not big and muscular. But still, for those people that are free of arachnophobia….enough said. So I go about, doging questions about why I jump back and holler when a spider appears on a log. A typical situation would go like this;

Me, upon seeing spider: Ahhh!
Friend: Whats the matter are you afraid of spiders or something?
Me, popping knuckles nervously: Uh, no, heh heh, I have just, uh, never seen this species before.
Friend: Oh really? You’ve never seen the great-big-huge-hairy-fast species of spider before?
Me: Uh, no.
Friend: Wow, here you want a closer look?
Me: NO!! I mean, na, that ok. I gotta go to the bathroom.
Friend: Again? You just went!

And so that is how my fear of spiders affects my life, with all the sobs and screams taken out. What’s your story?