I Nearly Peed in My Pants
And my poor heart nearly couldn’t take it
People often wonder if it’s possible that one gets such a fright that the shock brings on a heart attack. After what I experienced yesterday, I would say yes.
What I faced gave me such a shock my heart jumped into my throat, my heart rate jumped from 75 beats a minute to … I don’t know, 125 beats a minute, give or take a beat, I broke out in a sweat, and trembled all over. If I had been the fainting kind I would have been flat on the floor.
It all happened so innocently. My son was browsing the Net and came across a metal structure in Ottawa of a big black spider. A man was posing underneath the structure to show the huge height and width of the spider, which I estimate at about 10 meters high and wide (32 feet).
I remembered seeing a similar spider in Sydney, Australia. That is to say, I didn’t actually see it, I looked it up online.
I was reading ‘Origin’ by Dan Brown at the time and whenever the author made reference to a specific place or item, I went online and Googled it.
At the time I typed in the search bar ‘Metal structure of spider in Sydney’ and within seconds I was presented with images of said spider so I knew exactly what Dan Brown was referring to.
To show my son a comparison of the Sydney spider to the Ottawa spider, I once again went online, typed in Google’s search bar ‘Structure of spider in Sydney’, and hit enter.
OMG, what a mistake that was. Instead of the metal spider structure in Sydney, my screen was filled with huge spiders. And I do mean HUGE ones. These were no ordinary spiders that one could kill with a shoe, these things one would have to shoot (with a bazooka or something).
People who like spiders or who are not afraid of them might think me cruel, but I hate the bloody things. More so, I am a first-rate sufferer of arachnophobia.
As such, when I saw my screen filled with the eight-legged monsters, I screamed and my computer went flying. As mentioned earlier my heart was in my throat, my heart raced, and it felt like my blood was boiling.
My son came to the rescue. He doesn’t like spiders either, but he’s not as horrified of them as I am.
It took minutes for my heart rate to return to normal and once it was, I wondered what was wrong with Google. I hadn’t asked to see live spiders; I had clearly specified the ‘structure ‘of spiders in Sydney’. The word ‘structure’ clearly indicates that I’m looking for something man-made.
Who creates these beasts anyway? I can understand that artists create a statue of a horse, a bull, a lion, or even a dolphin, but a spider!?
Most people are afraid of spiders, so why place one in the middle of a town square or sidewalk? Does the creator want to give us a heart attack?
Two things are for very sure. One … Google can’t be trusted. From now on, I’ll be very careful what I research online.
Two … From what I read online, Australia is home to over 10,000 species of spiders. Safe to say, I am NEVER going there. You couldn’t pay me to go to Australia.
