Brooke Cox recently wrote about the “Spider in the Blue House.” That reminded me of why I also hate spiders. It happened a long time ago when I was in the fourth grade. Spiders have given me the willy-wooley crawlies ever since.

We were living in the country in an old farm house. The rent was cheap. Times were hard and Dad worked out of town. Our mean old landlord only rented us the ground floor of the house, the outhouse and a garden spot The barn and other outbuildings were off limits. We wouldn't live there long. Dad had an argument with the landlord, probably over something us kids had done, and we were forced to move.

So, we couldn't play in the barn? Huh? Is that what he said? Yeah, right! Our favorite place to explore and play was that big old barn. You would have liked the barn. It was put together with pegged timbers that seemed to run every which way. We would walk those high up timbers with no fear. Since the landlord seldom came around and we could see his car whipping up dust coming down the dirt road, we were never caught.

Cobwebs adorned the dark corners of the barn. We paid them no-never-mind, that is until one fateful day. My brothers had swiped one of Mother's canning jars including the zinc lid. I watched them search out spiders from the barn's dark recesses. They found quite a few, all sizes and colors. When I asked why they were collecting spiders, they just smiled and said they had a plan, but they couldn't tell me what it was. It was a surprise. Yeah, right! Surprise for who?

As the day wore on I forgot about the jar of spiders. Supper came and went. There was no television in those days. The evening radio dramas didn't interest the three of us. We would go to bed early.

I remember putting on my nightgown and crawling between the cool sheets of my cot. My brothers had the big bed. I slept on an Army cot made up with sheets and blankets. (That was to be my bed for years.) It felt so good to lay there in that quiet, dark room with a cool evening breeze coming through the open window, lulling me to sleep.

But not for long. As my body warmed the sheets, I felt something move up my arm, then along my back, then just about everywhere. Suddenly I was being painfully bitten by what? God only knew what. I jumped out of bed and threw back the sheet. My bed was crawling with spiders, those same spiders my two brothers had collected earlier in the day. I ran screaming from the room. My brothers were jumping with glee! But not for long. Dad's belt came off and doubled in his hand. What joy there would have been to see their agony, if I weren't in so much pain from multiple spider bites. Mother dabbed them with salve.

Even nowadays, in my nineties, I still cringe when I see a spider. The memory of that dismal evening stills haunts me. Everything stops until I kill that vicious, mean-mouthed, dastardly, creepy-crawly, no-right-to-live spider. “ Splat !”