I am someone who believes it is never too late to change. I think you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks, as long as the old dog is open-minded and willing to learn. As long as the old dog is willing to admit when it was wrong, and work to become a better dog.
OK yes, I am the old dog. And the trick I am trying to learn, even though I am decrepit? It is an important one, something I have struggled with, frequently, for my entire life. I have been trying … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. Apologies to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be realistic about my possible growth as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is large, in charge, and the one I encounter most often. Including three times in the last week. Inside my home. You can’t see me but I’m shaking my head and grimacing as I type.
I doubt I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but I’ve been working on at least becoming Normal about them.
I have been terrified of spiders since I was a child (unlike other children who adore them). Growing up, I had ample brothers around to make sure I never had to engage with any personally, but I still freaked out if one was visibly in the same room as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and trying to deal with a spider that had crawled on to the lounge-room wall. I “dealt” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (in case it ran after me), and spraying half a bottle of insect spray toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.
As I got older, whoever I was dating or living with was, by default, the least afraid of spiders between us, and therefore in charge of dealing with it, while I made low keening sounds and ran away. If I was on my own, my tactic was simply to leave the room, turn off the light and try to forget about its existence before I had to enter again.
Recently, I stayed at a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who lived in the window frame, mostly just hanging out. In order to be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a her, a girlie, one of us, just chilling in the sun and listening to us yap. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (a little bit). Or, actively deciding to become less scared worked.
Whatever the case, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I know they eat things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). I know they are one of nature’s beautiful, harmless-to-humans creatures.
Unfortunately, however, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the most terrifying and borderline immoral way imaginable. The sight of their many legs carrying them at that terrible speed causes my caveman brain to kick into overdrive. They claim to only have eight legs, but I believe that triples when they move.
But it isn’t their fault that they have scary legs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – if not more. I’ve found that taking the steps of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their positive qualities, has actually started to help.
Just because they are hairy creatures that scuttle about extremely quickly in a way that haunts my sleep, doesn’t mean they deserve my hatred, or my girly screams. I can admit when I’ve been wrong and driven by unfounded fear. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” stage, but you never know. There’s a few years left in this old dog yet.
Rebecca Shaw is a Guardian Australia columnist
