"Dad," she said, "I need you to come down here and take care of a problem."
"Wait...what? What's wrong?" Panic started rising, the natural state of a parent no matter the age of your child.
"There's...there's...a giant spider in the bathroom! I need you to come down here and kill it!"
Well. I'd do anything for my daughter. But she lives nearly an hour away and it was late. And honestly, I just didn't get it.
"Come on, I'm not going to do that. It's not that bad. Just go in there, flash the light on your phone around...it'll hide." Proud of myself in that Dadly sorta Dad way, believing I laid down supreme wisdom, I only made matters worse.
"Dad! It's as big as a Volkswagen!"
"Hmm. Okay...how about taking your dogs in there. They'll scout it out and eat it." Believing my logic to be impeccable (her dogs will eat anything, including Volkswagens. If you guys ever need your car junked, she'll hire her dogs out.), I thought it a done deal and was one foot in bed.
"Dad! I can't go in there!"
By this time, I was beyond frustrated. Here's the deal: during her formative years, my daughter wasn't afraid of spiders. Oh sure, she wasn't fond of them, not ready to make them her friends, but it just seemed like ordinary minor freaking out. But later, she latched onto my wife's crippling fear of spiders. My wife's arachnophobia is major--legendary even--her ear-piercing screams of terror shattering windows throughout our neighborhood like Ella Fitzgerald on steroids. Once, she even jumped out of a moving car when she spotted a spider inside. And she was driving. My wife taught my daughter many wonderful, empowering things while raising her, but arachnophobia probably falls into the negative column.
Always the man, always frustrated, always clueless, I did what any frustrated, clueless man would do when faced with overwhelming adversity: I tried to fix it. Quickly and easily. In a very one and done manly way.
"Okay," I said, "what exactly are you afraid of? Sure, spiders are creepy and maybe a little gross, but they won't kill you." (Of course I didn't mention the dreaded brown recluse spider, but I was sleepy. And a man.).
"I don't...I don't...I don't like spiders crawling on me."
"But," I exclaimed, using a very authoritative voice, "that's what spiders do. They're just doing their job."
"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
I can't even remember how this crisis ended, but I was beyond sleepy, absolutely unwilling to travel an hour to kill a spider.
But as is my wont, it got me thinking about fears, irrational or not.
Of course, phobias aren't logical. The very definition of "phobia" makes allowances for the fear to be unrealistic. There are no reasons for a phobia (unless you're the "Final Girl" in an 80's horror movie who witnessed a man dressed in a Santa suit slaughter your family, then you have a reason for hating on the man in red). But if you're not the Final Girl, just deal with it.
I told my wife my suspicions that my daughter adopted her crippling phobia of spiders. She poo-pooed it, her being a scientist and all. But I'm taking a page out of Maganomics and saying "Bah! What do scientists with their big woke logic and facts and truth know?"
Take my pal, George, for example. In college (because we had nothing better to do, I suppose, and were actually kinda dicks to our friends, don't ask me why), I thought it'd be funny to start the rumor that my friend was afraid of clowns. Well, it either became a self-actualizing truth through the power of persuasion (and dickdom) or I had accidentally struck pay-dirt on a true phobia of his. To this day, I believe he's still bothered by clowns.
Another odd thing regarding phobias is that they can change over time. Growing up, I had no problem with heights, rode every roller-coaster, scaled the highest heights, ain't no mountain high enough. Now, I'm absolutely petrified of heights. When my daughter and I went to a "haunted (that didn't bug me a bit, kinda hoping for some paranormal whatsis)" Florida lighthouse, I froze on the upper parapet, clinging to the wall while others laughed at me. Weird.
So it was easy for me, sitting an hour away from my daughter, to tell her to just get over the Big Bad Spider in the bathroom. It made perfectly manly-man sense to this guy. (But if someone tells me that I'm going to go sky-diving, I hope I'm wearing Depends on that occasion.)
While I'm rattling on about scary things, I would steer you toward my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Not everything in it is scary, mind you, you also have to deal with my dark sense of juvenile humor in several of the tales. But one of the best compliments I've ever received was regarding the closing novella, The Underdwellers. A horror author who I admire told me that "it's the scariest thing I've ever written." And you know why? Because it deals with my OTHER phobia: going underground, deep into the earth where terrifying things await you.
AIEEEEEEEEEEE!
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