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I know how she feels. First time i found out i was going to get to meet Neil Armstrong i went ape

Okay, that explains why Katherine was so surprised to hear that Digit was attending high school.

Should have expected that . . .

Actually, I partially did see it, but not clearly.

And definitely did not expect, even with yesterday's hints, that Katherine would go full-fangirl!


And Katherine has found a way to embarrass Atsali!

--FreeFlier

oldmanmickey wrote:I know how she feels. First time i found out i was going to get to meet Neil Armstrong i went ape

Should have seen seventeen-year-old me when I realised that i knew this nice fellow named Harry Stubbs who'd spotted that i was somewhat lost at the 1966 SF WorldCon and come over to explain things and greet me better as "Hal Clement"...

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

oldmanmickey wrote:I know how she feels. First time i found out i was going to get to meet Neil Armstrong i went ape

Should have seen seventeen-year-old me when I realised that i knew this nice fellow named Harry Stubbs who'd spotted that i was somewhat lost at the 1966 SF WorldCon and come over to explain things and greet me better as "Hal Clement"...

I would have gone seriously fanboy under those circumstances, too.

And this gives Atsali another wonderful (and very traditional) opportunity ...

... to be completely embarrassed at how her Mom interacts with her friends and acquaintances. I'm sure if Atsali does it right, she can hit at least fourteen different notes and semitones while saying just the one word "Mommmm....!??!?!?!??!"

Makes sense now. She expected Digit to have just gained self-awareness, not that she would have full knowledge of her original spider form and be able to chat about it with clarity.

To Katherine, this is the chance of a lifetime to talk with a real life spider person!

oldmanmickey wrote:I know how she feels. First time i found out i was going to get to meet Neil Armstrong i went ape

I did a double fanboy fit when that happened to me--I met Neil Armstrong at the same event where I got to meet another childhood hero, Don Walsh. It was an evening of highs and lows, you might say.

To be fair, I'm with Kath on this one.

You know, Katherine and Atsali certainly act alike when they're enthused about something . . .

--FreeFlier

At least we can be relatively assured that Katherine will NOT try to shove a pin though her thorax and fix her on a board for display...

Sgt. Howard wrote:At least we can be relatively assured that Katherine will NOT try to shove a pin though her thorax and fix her on a board for display...

At least not until after the questioning is done.

Dr. Otter wrote:

oldmanmickey wrote:I know how she feels. First time i found out i was going to get to meet Neil Armstrong i went ape

I did a double fanboy fit when that happened to me--I met Neil Armstrong at the same event where I got to meet another childhood hero, Don Walsh. It was an evening of highs and lows, you might say.

Oh, thank god - i thought meant the New Orleans Don Walsh, of whom Tales Can Be Told.

One such tale (as i got if from a mutual friend) involved brokering a sale suppressors which turned out to be to gentlemen with Sicilian surnames and then not delivering the goods after the money was in hand. (To be fair, it may have been a breakdown in the supply chain, not intent to defraud.) This caused simultaneous problems with the Sicilian gentleman and with that federal agency with alcohol and the like in its name.

In order to avoid both sets of interested parties, he arranged to become an informant for the FBI, and somehow got Jack Anderson to do a column about how this fine upstanding citizen who was co-operating with the FBI on important investigations was being harassed by ATF; somewhere along the way he settled things with the Sicilian gentlemen as well...

Sgt. Howard wrote:At least we can be relatively assured that Katherine will NOT try to shove a pin though her thorax and fix her on a board for display...

Let us hope Digit never sees Kath's spider collection, she might know some of them...

JSStryker wrote:

Sgt. Howard wrote:At least we can be relatively assured that Katherine will NOT try to shove a pin though her thorax and fix her on a board for display...

Let us hope Digit never sees Kath's spider collection, she might know some of them...

I doubt we have to worry about that: it is highly unlikely that any of those spiders ever visited the Library, seeing as her spider collection was from a time before Katherine ever went there... And while it may be conceivable that she would have continued collecting after her first visit to the Library, I doubt she would have had time, while in the Library, to further her collection...

lake_wrangler wrote: I doubt we have to worry about that: it is highly unlikely that any of those spiders ever visited the Library, seeing as her spider collection was from a time before Katherine ever went there... And while it may be conceivable that she would have continued collecting after her first visit to the Library, I doubt she would have had time, while in the Library, to further her collection...

I don't think Atsali ever even gave her the chance...

jwhouk wrote:

lake_wrangler wrote: I doubt we have to worry about that: it is highly unlikely that any of those spiders ever visited the Library, seeing as her spider collection was from a time before Katherine ever went there... And while it may be conceivable that she would have continued collecting after her first visit to the Library, I doubt she would have had time, while in the Library, to further her collection...

I don't think Atsali ever even gave her the chance...

So basically, raising kids is a full-time job, which then prevents Katherine from giving her phobia the time of day? That would certainly make sense.

Going ape shit must be a past time of hers.

I don't think Digit would have personally known any of the spiders in Kath's collection, and likely wouldn't care. Spiders aren't usually social outside their own species, aside from predation. Hell, most spiders will even eat members of their own species.

I heard somewhere about social spiders, but, again, probably only with members of their own species. It's even possible that Digit may have sampled members of some of the species in Kath's collection; I'd seen a couple of documentaries of jumping spiders preying on other spiders. In one, the jumper plucked at the other spider's web to draw its attention, then pounced. In he other, it was one kind of jumping spider against another. One was bright green, the other was a mottled grey and black.

So, yeah... Digit probably won't care about the collection.

Edit: Although, she could also point out to Katherine that most humans would be pretty horrified to see humans pinned up on display, so there is that.

lake_wrangler wrote:So basically, raising kids is a full-time job, which then prevents Katherine from giving her phobia the time of day? That would certainly make sense.

I'm not really clear where people are getting the idea that Katherine has a spider phobia. Shelly's the one with the spider phobia (and Amanda isn't crazy about them, either).

Katherine collects (or collected) spiders, as a hobby. It's one of the first things we learned about her. She seemed entirely comfortable with them, and commented that she'd added one (live) spider to her collection on the way over to the get-together.

Having a spider drop down beside her didn't make her spill her curds and whey. Instead, she took it in her hand, spoke to it in friendly familiar terms, and gave it good advice.

Kath wasn't at all freaked out by seeing a representation of a huge spider out in the desert. Atsali was the one who jumped at the mention.

I looked at the character-and-page index (such a wonderful resource) and didn't see anything else... other than Pablo's implication that Kath's own nature was spider-y and reclusive.

None of that says to me that "Katherine is afraid of spiders" (let alone phobic about them). It all says "Kath is comfortable with, and greatly interested in spiders." Hence, her fangirlishness at the possibility of actually talking to a (former) spider.

So - am I missing something, or are people mis-remembering her history?

Now, Kath did have a phobia (call it "social agoraphobia" for lack of a better term) as the result of post-traumatic stress syndrome, from having been very nearly killed when the team at the archaeological dig was machine-gunned to death.

She got better, during the Great Mapimi Adventure. Somebody wrote her a prescription which read "Get kicked in the face by a teen Siren" and it was just the ticket.