Last night I woke up with my heart racing. I had been dreaming about a big black hairy spider. In the dream, I was cleaning my stairs and saw a large, thick cobweb. It was more like a cocoon, really. Anyway, I was about to wipe it away when I noticed that inside it was a big black spider. By now the web had become much bigger than it was to begin with.

For some reason, it made sense in my dream to try to block the opening in the cocoon/web with slices of cheese, but the spider—which was now about six inches across—pulled these inside its nest and ate them.

That’s when I started to panic. In my dream, I called for help but no-one heard me. Then I realized I was on my own with this problem and had to solve it myself.  So, I scooped the whole thing, web, spider and all into a small box, using a kitchen spatula. I covered the opening in the box with a newspaper (which is odd because I only get newspapers electronically these days) and I ran outside with it all. I dropped the spider web with the spider, the box, the newspaper, and the spatula into the garden, and that’s when I woke up.

As I lay awake trying to calm myself down, I realized the dream was probably somehow related to a troubling event I had experienced earlier in the day.

When I was buying gas for my car, I happened to be at a gas station that also had a drive-through car wash.  There are not many of these in Edmonton, so I thought I would take the opportunity to give my car a long-overdue cleaning. I have driven through dozens of car washes over the years and find them very convenient.

This time, though, I was faced with unfamiliar technology. I am used to driving inside the car wash building up to the stop sign, putting my car in “Park,” and waiting for the equipment to do its thing.  The car wash I was at yesterday, though, behaved differently.

I was instructed to put my car in neutral and let the machinery pull it through the system. So I did as I was told.  I drove up to the entrance, put the car in neutral, and waited.  There was some clunking and bumping and then . . . nothing. My car didn’t move.  I was half-way in and half-way out of the car wash, but didn’t go any further.  The system sprang into action even so. I watched the front of my car being hosed down, and I saw the big brushes spinning around, but they were wasting their energy. They were nowhere near my car.

At this point I saw a woman with blonde hair inspecting the back of my car and looking at the wheels. I have no idea where she came from.  She looked at both wheels on the driver’s side, but did not attempt to speak to me before she walked away, towards the gas station. This puzzled me, but now I suspect she must work there and may have received some indication that something was wrong. It’s odd that she didn’t talk to me, though.

I was still sitting half-in and half-out of the car wash with my wheels locked in to the mechanism, the brushes were still going around, and I thought I should get out of the car to get help.  Exactly at my eye level, however, was a sign that told me not to do this. So what is a scared, bewildered woman to do?  Honk the horn. That’s what.

I honked the horn for a couple of minutes. Long blasts and short blasts. I even tried to honk SOS, to no avail.  No-one came to my aid.

“Well, the heck with this” I thought, or words to that effect. Against instructions, I took my car out of neutral and put it in drive.  As if by magic, my car effortlessly glided through the now-still car wash. The brushes had stopped twirling, my windshield was wet, my car was still dirty, but I was free!   I drove out of there and on to the highway as fast as I could.

Like a big black dream spider, a car wash can be terrifying. Maybe I should have fed it some cheese.