Trauma in the Lab

I'm supposed to be taking notes on the Orgo reading right now (I even have the book open to the right page in front of me, honest) but I still can't get over the trauma I just experienced. Allow me to provide a little background:

I used to work in the Yantis Lab so I'm pretty familiar with behavioral experiments. I have a friend who works in this particular lab so sometimes I agree to be a subject over ere too. Two weeks ago, I sign up for a "Learning & Memory Research Study". Sounds innocuous enough. $10 for thirty minutes? Sweet, I'm in.

Fast forward to today, when I go in to actually do the task. I'm told it's an "emotional study" and instructed to rate a series of images on an emotional scale of 1-9. A "1" would denote a very negative emotion, while a "9" would indicate a very positive emotion. Ok, cool, I got this, easiest $10 ever made.

The pictures start off simple enough -- food, scenery, animals. I give these 5-7s, I love my food, and I love my animals...sometimes at the same time. Then, they start presenting pictures of mummies, guns, and crime scenes. I'm like "YAY, CSI" so I give these 6-7s. Suddenly, out pops a picture of a GINORMOUS black widow. It's not exactly a secret that I am scared of spiders. People are just unaware how bad the phobia is. To my credit, I hardly flinch, and I press "1". I start giving myself a pep talk: "OK, got the spider over and done with. No more spiders. You can do this." Then, I notice some of the pictures are repeating. At this point, I get the sinking feeling in my stomach and I'm growing more and more resigned to -- "OH FUCK". Second giant picture of a black widow. I furiously mash on the "1" key. I know there are going to be more, but I reassure myself that I can handle a few pictures of black widows. I keep on going. About thirty pictures later, I'm still going strong, mentally steeling myself for the next picture of a black widow. I'm feeling confident and proud of myself for persevering.

 BOOM. GIANT PICTURE OF A TARANTULA.

I scream.

In my haste to get it off the screen, I may have pressed the "5" key. I do a few more pictures, but I can hardly look at the screen because I just KNOW there's going to be more. My hands are kind of shaking when I push open the door.

"Excuse me?"

Nice lady from the lab comes out.

"I'm kind of deathly afraid of spiders. Do you know how many more picture there are of them?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. There should be about three pictures. Yeah, we probably should have asked about phobias beforehand."
"I might have seen them all then. So two black widows and a tarantula?"
"Umm...well, three of each."

FUCK THIS SHIT.

"I'm really sorry, but I don't think I can do this."

While I apologize profusely, she reaches behind me to close the task, which is still running pictures every 2.5 seconds. She gives me a voucher for $10, which I try to refuse because I didn't finish the task. She insists. Apparently, finishing the task is not a requisite for being paid. Personally, I think she just felt sorry for me because I was visibly shaken. By the time I peaced out, I'm a twitchy, paranoid mess.

This is just the latest episode in a long saga of spider-related traumatic events. I've been afraid of spiders for as long as I can remember. When I see them around the house, I am paralyzed with fear and scream for help until my parents come rescue me. I've been known to run out of the shower dripping and naked. You have no idea how much scarier spiders are when they are only blurry black blobs moving on the wall. And I'm not just afraid of the real deal, I can't even look at pictures of them.

When I was in grade school, I told some asshole boys I was scared of spiders. They thought it would be hilarious to stick the Giant Illustrated Book of Spiders in my cubby. When it came time to go home, I needed to grab my homework from my cubby but couldn't get close enough to take the papers out. I cried. Boys got 45 minute detention. Ha.

In fourth grade, we had to read a story in the textbook called "Fear Factor". There was a giant picture of a tarantula on the cover page. Dale, the nicest boy with the largest hands, covered the picture for me until we turned the page. I've always liked Dale.

Middle school, boys (what's with boys and being douchenozzles) flashed pictures of a spider at me from across the classroom until I cried.

When my cousin came over to visit, my Dad took us to go see a vintage car exhibit. The adjacent exhibit was a Spider Exhibit. My Dad has always believed that I needed to try to get over my fear so he insisted that we go in. I'm tense as hell and keep my eyes fixated on the floor. All of a sudden, I hear my Dad say, "Catch!" and see a glimpse of something flying at me. Without thinking, I scream, bat it out of the way, run outside, and cry my little eyes out until my Mom came to collect me. I think my Dad got the dog house for that one. I recently brought this up when, on a road trip, my Dad tricked me into looking at a giant Black Widow replica someone had stuck to their car door. He says, "I don't remember that." ASSHOLE. My mom was like "Nope, that definitely happened." My sister says, "Oh yeah, that was hilarious."

Also, there was the time I was teaching in Taidong, Taiwan when I suddenly saw a tarantula nonchalantly creeping across the classroom in the back.  "FUUUUHH. WHAT IS THAT." One boy casually reaches out and smacks the tarantula with his slipper. I'm close enough to see its legs go flying. I thought the situation had been defused, then one boy decides it would be funny to scoop up the remains into a dustpan and chase girls around with it. As the authority figure in the room, I should have stopped it, but technically, I had already hied the hell out of there. My TA, who was a native Taiwanese man, was like "Stop running, it'll encourage them".  To which I replied, " I CAN'T. TARANTULA." To my credit, I did not cry.

There was a period in my life where I was not as scared of spiders. I was gradually desensitized by overexposure in Thailand and Taiwan. But I think having gone two years without seeing one in person in Baltimore has brought me right back where I started. Why can't I go to Australia? LOOK UP THE AUSTRALIAN SPIDER. Just thinking about it almost caused a mental breakdown.

Anyways, for those of you who think it would be funny to try to scare me with a spider...don't. I'm serious. I will scream, cry, curse you out, beat you to the ground, unfriend you on Facebook, and never speak to you again. In that order.

God, I'm still seeing spiders everywhere. (shudder) OK. Back to Orgo.