Ever since I was a little girl I’ve been afraid of insects. There was a time when I would play with caterpillars and lightning bugs, but somewhere along the way I became afraid. My mother who was a brave woman and didn’t take any shit off of anyone was deathly afraid of bugs. I’m blaming her for making me afraid of bugs. I was so afraid that I would go to great lengths to avoid them.
In 1985 my sister, Lola and I were cruising in my mother Grand Prix, you know the one with the T-Tops. There we were in Miami cruising in such a cool car. I was driving and Lola was in the passenger seat as we blasted disco music going down the street.
Then a giant spider crawled up the windshield. We both screamed. This was before seatbelt laws and so my first response was to jump out of my window, but Lola pulled me back in my seat, crawled over me and jumped out of my window while the car was still rolling. I was right behind her. We rolled around collecting gravel with our elbows. We watched the car as it rolled into someone’s yard stopping just before their living room window. The homeowners came running out of the house as Lola and I checked out our wounds.
“What happened?” The homeowners asked us. We told them of the giant spider and they were enraged. “You almost ran your car into my house because of a spider?” The man asked us in exasperation. “You jumped out of your car and abandoned it because of a spider? What if the car would have hit someone? What if someone got hurt? How do you just jump out of a rolling car?” The man was angry. “Now get your car out of my yard.” He demanded.
“I’m not getting back in that car.” I told the man. He ran into his house while his wife tried to reason with us. The man came back with a can of insect spray. He sprayed the car until the can was empty. “There, no spider can survive that, now get your car out of my sight.” He demanded.
“If you don’t produce a dead spider I’m not getting back into that car.” I told him calmly. “I want this car out of my yard now!” The man yelled. I grabbed Lola and said to him that he can move the car, but we were walking home. Lola and I walked home and when we told my mother that we had abandoned the car because of a spider she without delay found someone to retrieve the car. It was a “Marielito” named Juan who was a tough refugee from the Mariel boat lift. He wasn’t scared of anything.
Juan brought the car home and we bombed the car for three days straight. No one would get in that car until the dead spider was produced to prove it wouldn’t be there anymore. We would make Juan check the car every day until the dead spider finally appeared. When Juan saw the size of that spider he told us that if he knew the size of the spider was not exaggerated by us, he would never have driven that car.
My mother taught us to be afraid of bugs. She was always plagued by them. It seems I was too, until the day that I lived alone and the only thing that scared me about that was who was going to kill the bugs. I have been known to go spend the night at a friend’s house because of an insect in my house. Then one day I declared my size and advantage over these insects. I started killing them myself and it was empowering. Once I did that, the bugs disappeared. I don’t see them anymore. Not like I used to. They may be crawling all over my house, which I doubt, but I don’t see them. It seems that my fear of them attracted them.
My mother set the hardwiring to be afraid of something that I had total power over. I broke it and live in great harmony with the insects that used to rule my life.
When something plagues you need to investigate it, see it for what it really is and conquer it.