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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones Arachnophobic? Me? I’m one of those people who have always been afraid of spiders. I’m not afraid of them anymore. Terrified,
horrified, panic-stricken — those are still not descriptive enough
words to describe just exactly how I feel about spiders now. I’ve
seen the movie “Arachnophobia” several times. The exterminator, John
Goodman, has always been my favorite part. I hate the spiders! Last
Thursday, I went to a Photoshop seminar at Ole Miss, sponsored by the
Mississippi Press Association. Naturally, I wore something other than
my customary T-shirt and jeans. And, naturally,
the second I got home, I headed straight to change from my “good” shirt
and jeans to my ratty T-shirt and baggy cotton pants. As
I pulled my shirt off, I thought I’d scratched my arm. I had to look at
it in the mirror, as it was nearly on the underside of my upper arm.
Didn’t look like a scratch — it was turning red already. I called Pop in there to look at it and he said, “spider bite.” I said, “Naaah — I’ve never had a spider bite before.” Apparently, never having been bitten by a spider does not mean that you’re immune to being bitten by a spider. The
good news is that I didn’t die from it. The bad news is that some
people do die from brown recluse spider bites. Pop was positive that it
was a brown recluse. Yes, I was lucky enough to be bitten by a brown recluse! Friday,
I itched a lot; Saturday, I had blazing red patchy places and my entire
body itched — the spider bite site hurt too badly to scratch, but I
made up for that by scratching the entire rest of my body. Sunday,
I was in agony. Everyone at church looked at the now horrible-looking
place on my arm and said, “Go to the doctor; you’ve been bitten by a
brown recluse spider!” Not me! I’m too tough! I don’t need no stinkin’ doctor! Ha!
Monday at work, when everyone said, “Go to the doctor!” I was through
arguing. Mostly because I was in so much pain that I wanted to go to
the doctor. After work, when I finally saw a doctor, he walked into the room, looked at my arm and said, “Oh, a brown recluse spider bite.” I’m writing this on Tuesday afternoon and I am in worse agony.  If you see a spider of any sort, run! And just so you’ll know what one looks like...
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