I don't like Spiders 'n Snakes...

Last Minute Lyn does a weekly "piece" on her blog called Seven Things I Didn't Know Last Sunday. I'm following her lead this week, and writing...well, about one thing I didn't know last Sunday.

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Clint and I hit the road Saturday morning, heading to St. Louis to help his daughter Jennifer move into the new house that she and her fiance, Bill, just bought. We spent the weekend with them, and Bill's son Will, and had a great time.

First meal at the new place

Will grills it up

On the way down, Clint noted a spiderweb between the headrest of the driver's seat, and the side of the truck. "I killed a tiny spider in here earlier, must not have noticed the web."

A teensy little spider. Ok. I used to be scared of spiders. I've overcome my fear by repeating "spiders are the good guys; spiders are the good guys." Brian and I began naming larger spiders residing around the house. Betsy, aka Itsy Bitsy Betsy, lived on our porch for what seemed like months. We still gave her a wide berth, but naming her made her more lovable. As lovable as she could be, being a spider and all.

I'm not afraid of spiders anymore! That's where I was, mentally, on Sunday morning, after Clint and 11-year-old Will and I had just had breakfast out. We were heading back to the new homestead, when I offhandedly wondered if that spider web was still lingering about the headrest. I glanced over, to see this:

My life-like Photoshop rendition, as I recollect the situation.

I began my best Horshack imitation: "Oh! ooo! Oh!" Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking "kid in the car, don't say f***!" and managed to squeal, "there's a spider on your headrest, and it is not a teensy one!" As Clint tried to get a peek, I helped out by flattening myself against the passenger side of the truck. If we hadn't been doing 45 mph in 10 lanes of traffic, I'm pretty sure I would have thrown myself out the window. I never ruled it out; if the thing had jumped on me, I'd have been eating asphalt.

A wide-eyed Will was straining at his seatbelts to see around the headrest, as I continued to squeal: "Look at it, Will! Do you see it?" as if he could verify the tarantulosity of the situation.

Clint, worried only that the thing would find itself down the back of his pants, figured out fast that I was going to be of *zero* help in the Spider Slaying Department. He grabbed a pair of work gloves off the floor, and asked me to take the wheel. Picture this now: Clint turned around backward in the drivers seat, killing the spider, and me driving the truck from the passenger seat.

In a matter of seconds, the spider was kind of...well, squashed, and looking more like 2 dead spiders than one live one. We all got about catching our breath, and laughing over the ordeal:

"Whew! Heh. Sorry about the scene...that really sca-GAH! It moved, oh, I'm sorry, I swore the thing moved again, sorry, my bad, I'm just so nervou..EEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

The freaking spider honest-to-God started walking across Clint's headrest, AGAIN! I swear, it said "Blwawwrrrrr." Lawdamighty, it's Arachnid Day of the Dead! The only thing worse than spiders are Spider Zombies.

Clint, telling me to calm down (I could NOT calm down, I just couldn't) finally pulled into a gas station, where I opened the door and bailed out before the the truck came to a complete stop.

While he disposed of all spider zombies, I did about 48 laps around the parking lot, trying to halt the hyperventilating.

15 minutes later, my pulse had returned to near-normal, and we were pulling back out on the road again, when Will jumped, in the backseat: "Oh! There's another one." WHAT?!! Was he kidding me? It's the sort of thing my son would have done, when he was 11, to scare the bejeezus out of me "No! See it? See it's reflection in the window?"

WHAT? It's large enough to have a reflection in the window?! Is it? Is it large?

"Well, it has a big butt."

It has a big butt?! Do spiders have butts? I kept squawking and squealing, yet imagining this, at the same time:

Spider Got Back
(my very own drawer-ing)

Hey, I have a multi-tasking head. Anyhoot, I asked Clint to pull over again. Ask, demand, command, don't bother me with semantics. He did, and like the hunter-gatherer-protecter he is, disposed of Spider #2. I, of, course, bailed out of the truck once again, thinking ahead to purchasing one of these for the trip home:

Obviously, the string around the hood would drawn a heck of a lot tighter.

Anyway, back to the One Thing I Didn't Know Last Sunday:

My claim that I am no longer afraid of spiders was a big load of crap.