The blue moon that arrived last week was my cue to clean my room. As I picked up my dirty work aprons to empty their pockets, a rather large and hairy brown spider scurried over my wad of cash. Reacting like the strong man that I am, I dropped the aprons in fright and surprise and watched the spider skitter around the floor of my room until deciding that behind my beloved 1970s drumset would be a good place to nest and reproduce its stupid small spider family. Coins bounced haphazardly across (ironically) our 1970s, hairy brown carpet; adrenaline pumping, it was natural for each shimmer to catch me off guard. In fact, I spent the next half an hour scanning my room for any form of movement at all; they could all be spiders, you know.
When we encounter things we are fearful of, don't we, in some way or another, seek the feared (or at least create patterns, even illusions of the feared), just so we're not surprised the next time we see it? Why does seeing the spider make me continue to look for it for half an hour, even after it's gone?
