Rob's Blog
Arachnophobia
22nd Oct 2006 17:10
Every time I want to have a shower in the evening here's what I have to do:
I walk down the corridor and step through a hole in the wall, not a door, a hole. On the other side I cross a rather spooky room, an unlit corridor, descend some creaky wooden steps, go down a stone floored passageway, and open the door of the cupboard under the stairs. The position of the light switch is such that you need to fully enter the dark room and close the door behind you before having to fumble around in the dark for the previously unreachable light pull.
Only then can you do an initial scan of the room and shower cubicle for the mother-spider from Arachnophobia. Contrary to common belief Jeff Daniels never actually killed that spider 16 years ago and it is now biding its time before launching a cheap sequel in Somerset relying solely on our quaint English accents to pack out the American box office in order to make enough money to retire back in South America.
The walk to the shower room next door is just long enough to build an unhealthy fear of spiders yet not quite long enough to justify an unwashed existence.
On my walk to the shower this evening I had a though. Those who aren't of a normal arachnophobic persuasion often try to persuade us that “the spider's much more scared of youâ€. Now, I've just been pondering why that's never carried much weight for me, and I've just hit the flaming nail gun on the head:
If our fear of them is irrational, why should their fear of us be rational?
It's just not an inductively sound argument to believe that all spiders are scared of people. A rather more logical speculation is that something like 37% of all spiders irrationally despise humans and believe that regardless of size difference they happily kill a fully grown adult male.
I've never actually come across a homicidal and irrational spider... and for that I count myself lucky.
