20 Things Better Than the First Thing I Did In 2020
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Fear, Arachnaphobia, Would You Rather, Humor, Spiders

Have you ever seen the movie Arachnophobia? Well, I have that. That dreadful fear of those disgusting eight-eyed-eight-legged creatures of nightmares. Ugh! Just writing about them makes my skin crawl.

Needless to say — but I’m gonna say it anyway — that looking up from my cushy comfy spot on the bed just minutes after watching the clock change and seeing a disgusting yellow-sac spider about two feet away from my face was definitely not the way I was hoping to start the new year.

I can think of so many other things I would much rather do…

20 Things Better Than Locking Eyes With a Spider

Get a bikini-wax by a first-time rookie who has no idea where the ‘line’ is. Clean the bathroom after a frat-house kegger that served nothing but beer and Taco Bell. Lots and lots of Taco Bell. Move to a stifling hot country that doesn’t believe in bathing or deodorant, and become a professional armpit sniffer — it’s a thing! Get a root canal by an apprentice dentist high on acid, without any novocaine. Spend a week at Holman penitentiary — apparently, it’s the most violent prison in America. Walk five miles barefoot, uphill, in the snow, both ways. You know, like all of our grandparents did every single day! Feed a Gremlin after midnight. Sit through five hours of watching hubby play non-stop GTA V (again) …I kind of feel like I have personal relationships with all three characters by now! Go bungee-jumping with a too-long rope over a river crawling with hungry alligators. Eat a heaping bowl of wiggly earthworms, maggots, fire ants, and stinkbugs doused in Mad Dog plutonium hot sauce. Go two rounds with Ali, blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back. Run a full marathon, barefoot over hot coals, with a gaze of rabid raccoons on my heels. Make out with a cactus. You know, the kind that look like giant prickly penises? Take a bath with great white sharks during that time of the month. Walk across the Sahara naked without water, in the middle of a sand storm. Be the girl that runs up the stairs in a thriller movie, and has to jump through broken glass down from the second story. Take an all-day elevator ride with a dozen whiny and rambunctious 5-year-olds. Up and down, up and down… Sit through La-La Land one more time (Don’t hate me…I love Ryan and Emma, but that was the worst movie I ever paid to watch!) Tighrope across Niagara Falls in a bikini, with no harness, in the middle of February. Get all of my lady-bits pierced and tattooed by a drunken blind man.

Well, there you have it.

…instead of doing any of those exciting things, I ran aimlessly around the house half-naked, looking for a proper ‘weapon’ to save me from this creature of darkness who was obviously hell-bent on torturously exacting my demise.

My usual weapon of choice is a detergent spray bottle with the nozzle set on ‘stream’ for maximum distance. But in my state of panic, I grabbed the first thing I saw, and so it was Death By Swiffer. It was quick (and hopefully painful). I said a few words during the short ceremony. The words were ‘DIE F****R!!!’

…and then I slept with the Swiffer beside the bed, should any of his bereaved wish to seek justice during the night.