Spiders and Circles Hye Jee Kim

Fears: spiders (super unique I know), clusters of circles

Annoyances: people who stop in the middle of the hallway, any high pitched noise, people who ask the same question more than 2 times, whoever sits at our table in second lunch have you ever heard of not eating like a drunk orangoutang how are you so messy I don't understand, people who brag about stupid things

Accomplishments: very few in number, getting into GSA, 4.0 GPA, getting a 5 on the comparative test without knowing what austerity is (I know now), wining APUSH jeopardy

Confusions:  why does life even happen, why is John Green so popular, Texas, Jim Webb, the trolley problem

Sorrows: what even am I doing with my life, netflix doesn't work on school wifi, I'm already almost out of data, CKYO

Dreams: go to college on the East Coast, travel a lot, learn Arabic, actually make some sort of difference in the world, see Ramin Karimloo play Phantom, meet Matt Damon, meet 90's Leo.

Idiosyncrasies: love of 90's and early 2000's rom coms, unbelievable knowledge about LOST (seriously ask me anything I know the answer) INK PENS, weekly existential crises

Risks: not going to MSTC and that's actually it. Jumping out of a plane (want)

Beloved Possessions: Then- Mr. Brown Heart, Wii, Copper Now- Each Little Bird That Sings, my dog butt hook, friends, parents (the last two aren't quite possessions but I belove them anyway)

Problems: life, root canal, buffering



Once upon a time, there was a young girl. She was sound asleep in the top bunk, when she felt someone shake her awake. "It's Saturday," she thought, "Why is someone trying to wake me up?" She opened her eyes and saw her older cousin Anna, who was at the ripe old age of 9. "Hey," Anna whispered, "Look up."

(side note: the young girl was in first grade, and had just finished the science unit where they learned about poisonous spiders, including  the Black Widow)

So the young girl looked up. And she saw THIS GIANT SPIDER DANGLING LIKE TWO INCHES AWAY FROM HER FACE AND IT WAS BLACK AND HAD THE RED HOURGLASS AND WAS LIKE THE SIZE OF A SMALL PLANET. And then she died.

The death part might have been just slightly exaggerated, but the rest of the story is 100% real and it happened to me when I was in first grade. After screaming and crying a lot a bit, my cousin dragged me to the couch. Her logic was that a spider couldn't climb the couch because the couch was "bumpy". Ever since then I've been deathly afraid of spiders.

My fear got worse two years later when a brown recluse bit one of my friends on the foot. He needed to get surgery, and a sizable chunk of his right foot was straight up removed. I was less okay with it than he was.

I think it's fair to say that I have a reasonable reason to be scared of spiders. My other fear is pretty irrational. I'm scared of clusters of circles.

But it's only some clusters of circles. Sometimes polka dots will freak me out (Liz has a dress in the 8th grade that I'm scared of), and other times they won't affect me at all. But things like egg sacs, honeycombs, and that one skittles commercial where the guy is covered in the little round candies make me really uncomfortable.

I have goosebumps just writing about them.

My friends, namely one smaller than average curly haired girl, likes to use this to my disadvantage. Every now and then they'll draw clusters of circles on either my stuff or me. If it's something that I can afford to immediately destroy, I will. If it's my hand, then I just suffer until I can scrub it off. It's all in good fun, but actually it's terrible.

If the Earth was filled with spiders that had clusters of circles on them, I would become an astronaut botanist, go to a mission on Mars, get hit by debris during a storm, and then just live up there farming in feces for the rest of my life. Sorry.