I Have Ruined Red Grapes For My Whole Table And Now I'll Ruin Them For You Too

I refuse to eat red grapes. Today at lunch, I purchased a box that contained both red and green grapes, and I’ve been offering them to people sitting around me. The reason I won’t eat red grapes is because when I was in third grade I had a friend, Natalie, who was absolutely a nutjob. Most of what she said to me I tuned out in some way or another but one story she told me has stuck with me to this day. I think it’s because it exploited a fear I already had in a new and exciting way.

Basically, she told me you should never eat red grapes (specifically red) because they’d been finding Black Widow Spiders inside of them. People would bite into the grapes, bite into the spider (mmmmm) and get poisoned and die. Despite the fact that this is insane and completely improbable, it’s stuck with me pretty intensely over the years. I think I just can’t get the image of spider grapes out of my head.

But APPARENTLY, this is actually a real thing that happens! Apparently they find like hundreds a year, which is far too many if you ask me.

I hope I haven’t ruined red grapes for you, but if I have, at least I don’t have to suffer this phobia alone. Enjoy your spider grapes, ladies.