Spooky, Spooky Spider, Creeping Through My Memories//October 107th, 2024

You may already know, I consider one of my biggest "flexes" in life to be the fact that I beat arachnophobia. I worked very hard to overcome a lifelong fear of spiders, in about 2010 or so, and now I love spiders and actually prefer Halloween decor that features them. You can read more about that in this post. I've come a long way with it and though it may sound silly, I consider it a huge accomplishment. Overcoming any fear, no matter how big or small, is always something to be proud of.

I thought it would be fun today, though, to revisit one of my funniest stories from the time when I was still very much, almost obsessively and irrationally, arachnophobic.

The year was 2000. I had just turned thirteen, and I believe I was back-to-school shopping with my mother and aunt at one of the nearby malls. This mall, strangely enough, had a CVS inside of it, and from the outside, across from the Old Navy where most of my wardrobe from ages 12-14 came from, we could see that they were starting to put Halloween stuff out!

It was always fun to be out and about with Aunt Trish when Halloween started appearing in the wild, as she, being the person who got me into Halloween in the first place, was the only one who really matched my energy with it. We happily went running into the CVS...It's worth noting that this is the very first time I can recall seeing an "inverted" pumpkin pail, a black pumpkin with orange facial features, and that image stayed with me from then on as one of the truest symbols of Halloween. I don't remember much else of what I saw that day, except for one other thing:

On a little island type display in the middle of the sales floor, there were a bunch of stuffed spiders, with different colored stripes on their legs. I know now for a fact that there was orange, green, yellow, and purple for sure, but I also have a vague memory of red and white, though I can't be sure if that's a false memory. But anyway, I walked by the display of spiders, and they started flailing their legs at me and singing a little song that went:

Spooky, spooky spider

Creeping across the floor

Halloween is coming

The spooks are at your door!

I was thirteen. These spiders had goofy little faces and colorful legs. I had seen much more realistic toy spiders at Halloween time.

But, for some reason, these particular spiders terrified me to the point I bolted and didn't return. I don't remember anything else about that day, or anything else that may have been in the store beyond the pails. 

What I do remember, though, was that the image of these spiders, singing their creepy song and flailing their long legs, stayed with me for the remainder of that Halloween season, and beyond. I would often close my eyes and picture them, the way a child replays a part of a scary movie in their mind, and possibly remembers it as worse than it was. I thought of these spiders and I cringed, as if they were the most terrifying things in the universe. At one point, I even believed singing the song to myself, which I could never seem to stop doing, could somehow summon actual spiders, after one appeared on the couch one night as I was once again reliving my horrific experience in the CVS. There was also a Dunkin Donuts commercial that year with a song in the background that reminded me far too much of the song the spiders sang. I believe I came to see it as some kind of prophecy, as if the spiders were summoning their brethren and would eventually bring about some kind of plague of ghosts and goblins. I was truly traumatized, and the “eerie” song of the spiders stayed with me from that day forward. 

It truly still gets stuck in my head. So much so, in fact, that I recently went down a rabbit hole trying to find proof of their existence.

The result?

I wound up welcoming one into my collection. Once I had confirmation that he still worked, and could sing me the song of my tweenage nightmares once more, I simply couldn't help myself. I feel like he's a part of my "lore", so to speak. And he is most definitely a huge “screw you” to my former arachnophobia. Quite possibly the biggest one I could give it, given how terrified I once was of these particular spiders. 

I have to say, it makes me laugh even more now, to think of how terrified I was of these little guys, just over twenty-three years ago, now that I’m finally seeing one up close and personal. This guy could not possibly be more happy and jovial and nonthreatening. 

He does sound slightly aggressive when he sings, though. Listen for yourself. (Perhaps the song of the spooky, spooky spider creeping across the floor will stay with you, too, for almost twenty-four years!

Stay spooky, my friends, and don’t let the happy, colorful, joyous spiders bite.