The most terrifying blog entry I’ve ever written

I like nature. For most of my childhood, I lived in houses surrounded by woods, and I liked to explore them. I even went to an Audubon camp in Maine for two summers to hike and check out puffins. But spiders terrify me. Tonight, I was just sitting on my couch minding my own business, when I noticed a small spider crawling on my shirt. Fortunately, it crawled away from my face, and then onto my laptop. I was about to blow it off when it scurried under my laptop’s keyboard.

Watching the keyboard very carefully, I did what any reasonable arachnophobic blogger would do. I opened up a new blog entry and prepared to quickly announce my departure from the Internet, at least until I could get to another computer. But before I could even tap out a one-liner, the spider came back out, narrowly missing my fingertip and causing me to leap from my seat. As I was in mid-air, with gravity doing what gravity does best, I had to quickly act to balance three very strong emotions, all vying for priority: Fear of spiders, love of my MacBook Pro, and respect for my coffee table and body, which were about to collide.

I cannot remember what happened during the time between the realization of this situation and the moment I returned to the ground, but I ended up on my feet, laptop safely in my hands, and spider harmlessly on the floor. Oh, and my heart was beating about a zillion BPM.