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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
March 4, 2012
Published as Family History in a
Gramma Letter dated March 7, 1995.
© 1995 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Seven-Year-Old Girl, 1995
© 1995 by Bud Grossmann
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SPIDER MAN
Tuesday, March 7, 1995
Dear Gramma,
Neither of my two children is especially quick in matters of obedience. And so, last night, when seven-year-old Elizabeth began to get into her bed, and her mother, standing in the doorway of the room, snapped, “Get back here!” our little girl stayed where she was and asked, “Why?”
In another instant, Eliz saw for herself the Why behind Frances’s command, and the kid sprang to her mother’s side. A sugar cane spider, brown-bodied and bristle-legged and wide as the palm of a person’s hand, was on the wall beside Elizabeth’s pillow. Those guys bite. I forget whether they are reputed to bite people or just what it is that they bite, but we have sometimes awakened to find nasty inflamed lumps on various parts of our bodies, and we have blamed spiders rather than mosquitoes or fleas or any of the other nocturnal trespassers here in the tropics.
Frances and Elizabeth summoned me, our family’s Official Bug Smacker, and I obediently answered their excited call. The spider scrambled up the wall. I glanced around the room but could see no suitable smacking implement, and I thought if I went to the kitchen for a fly swatter, I might be allowing the creature time to escape. So I rushed across the hall to my bathroom and found the 70th Anniversary issue of The New Yorker Magazine—272 pages thick.
I doubled the magazine length-wise so I could get a grip on it, and I figured 500 pages of mostly-advertising should do a lot of damage to a soft-bodied cane spider. But the book-like magazine lacked the proper aerodynamics for the job, and my first couple of swings missed the target. The spider ducked under the window curtain. Frances opened the drapes, and we saw my prey dancing along the top of the window screen where the drapery rod kept me from getting a good shot at it. Each time the spider took a few steps (quite a few, when you consider that eight legs were doing the dancing), my beloved wife muttered helpful commentary at me: “You’re letting it get away!”
Whack! Thump! Darn! The spider was hiding in the caning beneath a rattan chair. Whack, again! This time I connected—I could see two segments of a spider leg land on the floor, but the amputee darted from the chair and then, with no apparent sign of a limp, entered a tiny space between the bed and the wall. Fran, disgusted, said, “Elizabeth, let’s go read in the living room.” And to me she warned, “You better not let it get away.”
Well, let’s see. What to do, what to do? Move about four million stuffed toys from Elizabeth’s headboard shelf to her dresser top. Move pillows, blankets, and the double mattress. There’s no box spring, just plywood sheets covering four drawers in the bed frame. I built this bed myself, and I know it’s heavy. I lifted off the plywood and saw that the spider could have gone anywhere. Or maybe it was still behind the headboard, where I last saw it.
Before I tugged the bed out from the wall, I went to the kitchen to find the fly swatter and a flashlight. Dave was doing homework in the dining room. “Did you get it, Dad?” he asked.
“No, but I have a plan. I’m going to slap the wall and shout ‘Hooray!’ and then flush the toilet. Then if Mom sees the spider again, I’ll say, ‘Huh! I guess he had a brother!’”
I am pleased to report, today, however, that I didn’t have to resort to deceit. In a little while, I had a seven-legged corpse to present proudly to my family, and in a little while more, I had Elizabeth’s bed reassembled. The stuffed toys, though, will just have to get used to their new home on the dresser.
I’m out of news and out of room. Bye, now.
Love,
Buddy
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This page was updated Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 10:30PM CST
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© 2012 by Bud Grossmann
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