Spiders & Straight Jackets. EVERYWHERE!!

I'm not sure if you've ever stepped into a car infested by spiders, but if you have you know....

It started about 3-4 years back. My driveway has the largest canopy of tall trees you've ever seen. I assumed they reached their peak in growth & all living things decided to go ape shit, make a brothel out of & take up residence in these gigantic insect & animal nests in the treetops, and I'm pretty sure of it considering the time a flying squirrel shot out of one & flew down over my head in the driveway one night.

No, it wasn't a bat. It was a real flying effing squirrel.

I know because I was convinced I was hallucinating & felt I possibly should have been taken to the hospital for toxicology testing.

"I just saw a flying fucking squirrel."

"Did you really?"

"That's what it looked like, but flying squirrels don't exist, do they?"

"They sure do."

"Then that's surely what the fuck just flew over my head!"

"You sure it wasn't a bat?"

"Noooooo, this was clear as day a goddamn squirrel with wings."

Exactly WTF happened, cept' in the dead of night.
Might as well be my tree.

And if you did happen to look up above, underneath this canopy, you would notice something...

Hundreds of lil white spiders, falling silently from the pre-apocalyptic sky.

Some things I can get over. Spiders? NOT HAPPENING!!

And thanks to parking bans, drunk neighbors with fireworks & all that super fun stuff, we have to park in our driveways around here.

You know spiders like to come out at night, right?

And wouldn't you know, Pixi's like to go out at night as well?

My parents live in the same house, different apartment, and we share the same driveway, though they rarely go out. If they do, it's usually somewhere quick during the day. Obviously their chances of running into a spider in one of the cars are next to nil.

So, during the first year of this, EVERY. NIGHT I go out, I get about halfway to my destination, stop at a light or whatever, and see a big, white spider making its way across the dashboard.

Clearly, this would cause me to pull over in panic, jump out of the car, and on too many occasions than I'd like to admit, the spider was nowhere to be seen by whomever else was sitting next to me because it had scurried back into the vents where they had made their nests.

People thought I was starting to go truly crazy. My anxiety through the roof, hallucinating spiders left & right when nobody else had seen them.

One night I truly lost my mind - I drove down the highway to grab a fountain soda & had only been out of my house for about 10 minutes. I once again see that scurrying lil shadow out the corner of my eye & jump out of the car.

When I jumped out & turned around, they were COVERING the outside of the car.

I called my mother to tell her somebody was going to have to pick me up, and that I indeed was NOT getting back into the car.

Wouldn't ya know, she not only hung up on my ass, there is no doubt in my mind she only wanted to see me safely snug in a straight jacket at that point.

"But marma, the spidey. He said he'd kill me in my sleep. He's in the room!"

I had to collect myself, squeeze back through that door & somehow get home.

At that moment the lil bastard that had sprung me out of the car was in clear view, so I started thrashing around with my pocket book left & right, in the parking lot of this busy drive-thru. 

Talk about a mental patient sighting. "She's escaped! And she's assaulting the interior of her car!"

I think I cried (along with a heart rate of 150) the whole way home.

But wouldn't you know, I had my ultimate glimpse of both relief & horror on my birthday last year.

After I spent the summer getting into the car shaking like a patient without their Haldol, we all get into the car that morning to go out for breakfast. I look around nervously, I'm hesitant, but I had surely thought this wasn't the time because it was daytime & dry outside.

I happily lift my iPhone to my face & notice something out of the corner my eye. Really?!?

Yeah, again, me! 

What was it?

THE BIGGEST DADDY LONG LEGS YOU HAVE EVER. FLIPPIN'. SEEN!!

Crawling up my leg to say "Happy Birthday, bitch!"

Bloody murder.

That's what I screamed & you better believe it.

Dad frantically pulls the car over. I think by the time he did, I was already out of it & halfway down the street running in circles on this poor normal family's lawn.

But my family? 

THEY SAW IT!!

And my father killed the HELL out of it.

I think in his mind it was kind of like

"We've come for your daughter, Chuck."

I don't think any two people had ever felt so bad in their lives for not believing me & the horror I had seen. That was apparent through my reactions & the time it took them to calm down & console me.

There's ultimately a lesson in this story, people: Don't doubt a crazy person. They may not just be crazy most of the time.

Oh yeah, and if you have to park under lots of spider infested trees, get your car exterminated in the summer for Christsakes.

Summer's coming. NOW I'm so afraid, I'm finally seeing spiders that don't exist. I've seen three, but they were raindrops or something of the like.

Try it, arachnid bitch.
I've got a midget knife.