Anyone who knows me well can vouch for my insane fear of spiders. I’m not just talking about a little discomfort when I see one. I have a serious aversion to those disgusting, hairy, eight-legged, beady-eyed, dream-haunting monsters. I know girls are supposed to be afraid of mice or snakes, but the only thing that would make a snake scary to me is if it had a spider on its back.

I’d curl up to snuggle with a thousand mice before I’d even think of coming within two feet of a spider voluntarily. I can’t explain my phobia, because it’s completely beyond all reason. All I know is, if there’s a spider in my room, I ain’t sleeping until I know that sucker is dead!

Speaking of fears that are completely unfounded, I threw myself into a full panic attack on the eve of “Meet the Parents” weekend with my boyfriend’s family. I had never been so nervous to meet a person’s parents before, and when I felt the panic attack coming on, I actually got annoyed at myself. I felt like Lisa Kudrow in “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” when she got hit by a limosine in her dream sequence, uttering an “Oh, COME ON!!” to myself.

For some reason, my mind’s eye had built up a kind of scenario where I had grown a third arm, or some other disfiguring quality that would cause his family to run away screaming at the sight of me. When you feel so strongly that a person has been brought into your life for a reason, one can’t help but wonder if that reason is to bring complete terror upon his loved ones at the sight of your anxiety-induced deformity of choice.

Despite all comfort from him that his family would love me, I couldn’t shut off that fear in my mind, so I spent the evening in the fetal position shivering like I had been forced to touch a spider for an eighteenth of a second. I have no idea how my boyfriend tolerates my insecurities and complete terror of harmless things…it must be the crushed-up Adderall I put in his drink when he’s not looking.

Obviously, meeting the parents went nothing like Greg Focker’s experience, and I had an absolutely wonderful weekend with my boyfriend’s family and friends. But I am left wondering…what is really scarier: holding a spider or meeting the parents? Maybe all my anxiety about the creepiness of spiders (blech!!) is no different from the unnecessary anxiety prior to meeting the boyfriend’s parents.

Maybe if I just get close and hold a spider for a few seconds, I’ll learn that there’s really nothing to be afraid of.

(I would finish this thought, but I tried to smash the spider on my screen and the computer broke)