The Toilet Revelation

I recently admitted a boring, quirky fact about myself on Mom Grind. It would seem she received a meme and decided to post it and her answer on her blog. A serious of other bloggers replied that they too had crazy quirks that they were willing to admit. I joined in:

After shutting off basement lights and climbing the stairs up, I can not get over the feeling that I have to sprint as fast as I can to the top for fear that someone/thing is going to reach out of the basement darkness after me; as if to pull me down into the abyss below. The funny thing is it’s only basement stairs, only if it’s dark below me. I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. The only difference between my reaction as an adult and as a child is that I try as hard as I can not to run now (like I’m on Fear Factor) and I look back to reassure myself that I’m just an idiot!

Well, I’m sure no one would be surprised to know that there’s more. Yep, this is just one more quirky boring fact about myself that I will share with you here:

One bright sunny day, in the house we just moved from, I shuffled my way to the laundry room / central latrine with a full bladder. With my mind elsewhere, as it usually is, I yanked up the toilet lid, preparing myself for a little relief. Unlike other days (or at least I certainly don’t recall every having studied this before), my eyes took a ‘drive-by’ gander into the water…and there, gazing back at me with a lost look in his eyes, was a SPIDER. YES! A SPIDER.

I’m sorry, did you hear me? I said, a spider.

What the heck is a spider doing in my freak’n pot when I’m getting ready for its casual use!?!?!? Now, you might be saying, it’s a spider and sometimes they’re in toilets. Well…some of us – ME – have never seen a spider swishing away in the toilet bowl. In 34 years, or whatever age I was then, I had never seen this. I certainly am not talking about the water spiders / bugs you see in lakes and ponds but an actual, bona fide, confused-as-I-was spider with brown crooked legs and a plump medium sized body.

My heart pounded so hard and so fast at this sight and what could have been, that I just about had a panic attack right there and then. No one was home. What was I to do? My insides were already jumping out of my skin and I was nearing a state of sweaty panicked ramblings…I flushed!

So, therein is my trauma that has now led to another boring quirk. I must see into the toilet before I’m willing to sit. I can no longer pee in the dark. It scares me so badly that, unless I look in the water to confirm, I just know a spider is going to crawl up onto me in a place no one wants a spider to visit.