The Spider Thing

I think my brother-in-law, Terry, and I have the same (somewhat unique) problem.  We don’t appreciate spiders much.

That’s not the problem entirely.  More like the beginning of the problem.

The problem is trying to describe spiders we have seen in our house to someone else so they might help us identify what kind of spider we saw.  Such a conversation might go something like this:

Other Person: “How big was the spider?”

Me or Terry: “Big!”

Other Person: “Yes, but how big?”

Me or Terry: “Huge big!  Unexpectedly big!”  

Other Person: “Okay. Let’s try something else.  Was the spider hairy?”

Me or Terry: “I don’t know.  I was busy screaming.” 

Other Person: “Did it look like a crab or was it more like something from Star Wars?”

Me or Terry: “It had a lot of legs and it was coming after me fast.  That’s what I noticed.  Horror movie stuff”

Other Person: “Color?”

Me or Terry: “Creepy spider color.”

Other Person: “You really need to man up on the spider thing.  I think you might be over-reacting.”

 Me or Terry: “You weren’t there.  I was only milliseconds from injury or possible death.  I threw my shoe at the spider and went back an hour later to see if it was there.  It was gone.”

Other Person: “Maybe you wounded the spider and it limped off to its lair to die.”

Me or Terry: “Or its growing bigger and plotting revenge.”

—Mitchell Hegman