The Shark Cage

I have two major fears in this world.

One is a fear of open water. Any large body of water, fresh or salty. It doesn't even have to be that large. Anything larger than a swimming pool can do it. I'm not sure if I'm afraid of drowning or sharks or really cold water or people seeing my bikini line in a less than stellar state. When I think back to my youth--sailing the Great Lakes in my father's sailboat, occasionally running aground on large granite boulders jutting up from the deep lake floor, and hearing my dad calmly say to me, "Go below and see if the galley is filing with water"--it makes me suspect it might be the drowning part I'm most scared of. But then there have been the times that I've been in crystal clear, warm, tropical ocean water, and I've realized that I've felt very little fear. Because I could SEE what was coming at me. And that's how I know that it all comes down to sharks. Well, not just sharks. Sharks, swordfish, octopi, squid, and any other large, menacing, toothy, tentacled, beaked fish or mammal who might want to nibble on my dangling legs for lunch. So that's why the shark cage so intrigues me. It's a life-sized version of facing your fears close up. Coming inches away from a large man-eater and not being able to run. Or swim. Or even pee your pants. Just facing it.

My other fear is spiders. This is, probably, a less justifiable fear than drowning or sharks. Tiny, mostly-harmless little spiders, theoretically easily crushed, shouldn't be able to instill much fear in a person 1000 times their size wearing rubber soled shoes, right? But there you have it. I'm afraid of tiny, mostly-harmless, nasty, freaky, creepy little creatures 1000 times smaller than me.

So when Big Daddy said to me last week, "hey, come look at this huge wicked-looking black spider I found on the porch," you would probably assume that I went running in the opposite direction. Normally when spiders are mentioned, I do. But this time I didn't. Because I knew instantly by the sudden chill in my heart that no other spider could be described in that way but a Black Widow. And I was right. When I got close enough to see its jett black body with the over-sized round abdomen and it's robotic looking legs, I knew. Even before its half concealed red hourglass was evident, I knew. And a fascination for this deadly, fearsome, disgusting black spider drew me in and wouldn't let me go. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. But I just stared at it. Then Big Daddy went and got a jar, ostensibly to trap the spider to show the kids.

So there it sat, in its sealed, airtight jar on our porch. For DAYS. I couldn't throw it away. And I certainly wasn't going to let it out to kill it. So I just stared at it from a few inches away, fixated and horrified at the same time. After a couple of days it built a web around the top, near the crack of the sealed lid, and hunkered down, almost daring someone to try to open the lid. So I would pick up the jar and shake it until the spider let go and fell to the bottom. Safe. Safer. For just a few minutes.

I couldn't believe I was getting this close to a Black Widow. Looking at it. Holding the jar. Turning it and hearing its thick body and pointy legs clank against the glass. It almost made me throw up. It almost made me faint. But I couldn't turn away. Because I knew...this was my shark cage. And it was as close to facing my fears as I was ever going to get.