Spider, Schmeider

We were eating lunch today, and I saw a spider on the ceiling. It was one of those "flat" ones that is about quarter-sized and can make itself almost completely flat. Strangely enough, I have never seen one anywhere but on the ceiling.


Well, being the brave soul that I am, I wanted to find out if it was alive. So I blew as hard as I could, hoping that the air flow would stir the spider and make it move.


Why, exactly, I would want to make a creepy-crawly spider MOVE, and thus creep myself out even MORE, I have no earthly idea, but I guess maybe it is just my dark side coming out. So there I was, blowing for all I was worth, and the darn thing wouldn't move!


So of course I went to the kitchen and grabbed a towel.


I proceeded to flap the towel in the general direction of the spider, preparing myself to run in the other direction (I didn't know WHICH "other" direction, just anywhere but DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH said spider) if the spider so much as lifted a toenail...er...a leg-hair?


The spider didn't move.


Griffin had been saying something -- apparently TO ME -- the whole time I had been placing myself in harm's way (because everybody knows that all spiders are aggressive and deserve to be squished) to protect him and his little brother. But the business at hand was such that it required my full attention and caused me to tune out all other noise...


"MOMMY!"


"Yes, sweetie? OH... did he just move??? Did you see him move?"


"Mommy, I think the spider is dead."


"Really? Hmmm, I don't know. He hasn't moved, and I have hit him about 30 times... you could be right."


Reluctantly, I abandoned my post beneath the might-have-crawled-his-last creepy-crawly spider, and sat back down at the table with the boys. I kept casting glances in the spider's direction, sure that he was just biding his time before he attacked us all.


"MOMMY."


"Yes, sweetie?" (I'm beginning to sense that it is hard to get my attention sometimes.)


"Mommy, I don't think that is the kind of spider that will bite us."


"Oh, honey (rather condescendingly)... ALL spiders can bite."


"Not dead ones."




WELL, I guess he told me.