Wholly Irrational

As people ask about my upcoming adventure, I often get asked about the spider situation. That is the one topic of information I’m actively avoiding. Giant snakes? Cool. Scorpion on my pillow? Been there, done that. Cockroaches? Whatever. Spiders? HELL NO.
Had anyone told me previous to my trips to Honduras that there would be tarantulas there, it might have given me pause. I will be constantly vigilant, and non-confrontational. They shouldn’t come near me, and I will try and get the locals to kill them but otherwise steer clear. Fine, truce. But had I known that one bright, sunny day I would be innocently writing in my notebook and casually glance down to find a GIANT TARANTUALA NESTLED ON MY SHOULDER I never would have gone. I would have sequestered myself into a hermetically sealed room and never stirred from there again. No joke.
How did this great fear start, you ask. Because its not only that I don’t like them, it’s that I’m so shaking-and-crying-when-I-see-one, deathly afraid of them. Perhaps I have always been afraid of spiders, of that I cannot be certain. What I CAN be certain of however is that as a young child of six or seven I found myself one day, sick in bed. My father in a well-intentioned act, proceeded to rent his beloved daughter a movie. He rented “Arachnophobia” HE THOUGHT I WOULD THINK IT WAS COOL. Well let me tell you. It wasn’t. In fact it was, quite truly, the single most terrifying 2 hours of my life. For years and years I have been plagued by a reoccurring dream about cunning and malicious spiders who stalk my family and then kill my sister (sorry Kallyn, it’s always you). So I just don’t want to know about the spider situation in Yemen, I just don’t want to know about it because if I did, I honestly might not be capable of going. One horrific day in the none to distant future I will find out first hand. Until then, I remain gratefully, blissfully ignorant.