Papa?
Papa.
Papa!
PapaPapaPapaPapa.
Papa is a heavy sleeper. I get up, glancing at the clock on my way to Carter’s room. It is 12:34 am.
me: Hey sweetheart, let me tuck you back in.
carter: Momma, there’s spider in my room.
me: Oh, no honey there are no spiders in your room. It was just a dream.
Glancing furtively around the room. Holy crap, if there is a giant hobo spider in this room I am going to loose my shit right here, right now and what will that do to Carter’s little psyche?
carter: I tried to run away from spider and spider follow me. I run and run but spider chase me!
me: Did you get away from the spider? You must have because you are safe in your bed. See it was only a bad dream, now let me tuck you back in and…
My God, did I just ask him if he got away from the spider? I shouldn’t have done that, what if he didn’t and he is reliving some horrible spider attack all the while I drabble on about bad dreams and tucking him back into to bed so we all can go back to sleep.
carter: No momma. The spider got me and it licked me. His little voice rising in pitch at the end of the sentence. In the glow of his green nightlight I can see his little lip start to quiver.
me: It licked you? I am taken aback by this unexpected comment and do not know what to say next. Being half asleep does not help matters either. Carter, I don’t think spiders can lick people.
carter: They do momma! They can lick people!!
me: Okay. Well you are awake now and we talked about how it was just a dream. There are no spiders in here that want to lick you. Do you feel better now?
carter: Momma, I thurrrsty.
I get Carter a glass of water, tuck him in, and head back to my bed wondering where in the world he got the idea of licking spiders. Do spiders even have tongues?
I refrained from Googling it until morning.
Shoes On The Wrong Feet 
I’m not sure why I clicked on the spider link. I hate spiders. I would have tucked him back in and ran for the safety of my own room too! In a previous house, we used to have what we called cave crickets. They looked like spiders but were crickets and hopped AT you. My God, they climbed the walls and beds. If I saw one of those in my room at night, there was no sleep until it was dead. Bugs that lick. That just complicates things more.
Sorry for the hobo spider link. I am a little scared to Google cave crickets (although I know that I will because I won’t be able to help myself now) as they sound pretty freaky.
Fear of bugs that lick – I am pretty sure that there needs to be a classification for that under phobias, assuming there isn’t one already. 🙂
Dude, now I need to Google that!
I used to have bad dreams when I was little about aliens with big white teeth. They were black, just like spiders. Creepy!
Nasty sounding aliens! I think I watched the movie Star Treck Wrath of Khan when I was way too young, and had many childhood dreams of those brain eating worms that were put into that guys ears. Ear licking spiders, could quite put me over the edge.
Happy Googling!
I really hope spiders don’t have tongues — for some reason that does make them scarier!
My friends brother got bit by a snake when I was at her house — he said it licked him. That was some kind of lick!
From what I have read, they do not. I hope that makes you rest easier at night. 🙂
Ha – a snake lick, too funny!
I’m not clicking the link, the I hate spiders. My friend Matt moved to Australia and told me to google Huntsman Spiders (DON’T) It was the biggest effing spider!
Once I swear I opened my eyes and there were two spiders over my head (I must have been dreaming) but I sat bolt upright said Jesus Christ (outloud) and jumped out of bed and burst into the kitchen for a flashilight. In the process I scared two dogs and my youngest daughter who was standing at the sink doing dishes.
I keep a flashlight in the bedroom now….:-)
I never really had a fear of spiders until I moved back to WA and encountered the Hobo spider (which we did not have where I grew up in WA). I was happy to leave the nasty cockroachs behind in AZ but not sure I made a good trade.
I would freak out if I woke up and thought there were spiders over my head!!
Middle of the night wake up calls are not fun. Sleepy eyes make it difficult to successfully vanquish spiders that are magnified to gargantuan size by the dark. Perhaps Carter was speaking metaphorically of licking?
I am glad he was able to settle back to sleep relatively quickly. I asked him the following morning if he remembered being awake during the night and me being in his room and he did – he even brought up the licking spiders as if it was a perfectly natural thing.
“Spiders are nasty” is now one of my all-time favorite tags. My mom was the single-handed force behind a Spiders Are Awesome campaign throughout my childhood, but it never took. I try to face them with mild “eh” instead of squashing coupled with “aaah!” but I’m better sometimes than others.
Also, my son’s nana got him to nap by telling him he didn’t want to wake the spiders. That did a great job keeping him still for naps . . . but also a great job terrifying him that the spiders would get him if he accidentally moved, thus leading “scawy spidews” to be the #1 thing we heard from my son’s room for about two months. (Now we’re back where we want to be, with “mama, open the door, please!” being atop the list. Yeah!)
Glad you noticed and like my tag – I enjoy creating and using tags that tickle my funny bone. 🙂
Oh, your poor, sweet son being scared by spiders to nap. I don’t know where Carter got his fear of them. I don’t like them at all but have tried my best not to let them know that. Children are too perceptive sometimes to trick or hide things from them. Now a Spiders Are Not Awesome campaign is something I could get behind.
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