True Childhood Adventures: SPIDER!!

First a word about Thanksgiving chez Bonomo: PACKED. There were about eighteen of us there, and approximately one pie per person. We didn't even dig into my pumpkin pie until Leftover Day 2! I had also attempted to make shrimp pinwheel rolls, but they didn't look so much like pinwheels as a miniature beached Moby Dick dissected into sections. However, they must have tasted OK, or else people were VERY hungry, because I put them out for an appetizer and they were almost completely demolished. I sat next to a person who dissed both vegetables and Li'l Wayne, two of my very favorite things ever, but otherwise it was a good time.

Here is another true childhood memory of mine: I was born in an East Coast town and then at the age of two moved to a Midwest town of the same name. If Leicester is pronounced "Lester" and Worchester is pronounced "Wooster," then this town really should be pronounced "Rooster." So we lived in government housing in Rooster with approximately 10,000 other families in a building that looked like a giant shoebox with windows in it. I had to share a bedroom with my brother (scandalized? are you still with me?) and we kept all our toys in a toybox. My brother had a LOT of toys, about one per resident of Rooster, and he was very diligent about making sure they all got out of the toybox every day for some fresh air, but he was not necessarily so good about putting them back to bed every evening. (Of course I, being "older" and "female," was expected to make up for this shortcoming on his part, but that's a story for another post.) So when I woke up one morning and noticed his big, black, plastic tarantula sitting in the doorway to our bedroom, I wasn't one bit surprised.

"You never put your tarantula away last night," I told him.

So he got out of bed and approached the "toy" tarantula, which then bolted under my bed. If you think this horrified me, then you are not aware of my reputation at that time as Junior Entomologist. My only disappointment was that I didn't find the tarantula, even after an exhaustive search. I suppose it utilized whatever pathway it had taken to escape from its owner to also escape from me.

A few years later I traded my pet toad for a giant garden spider, which thrilled my mother to no end. I thought it was so cool, with its perfect web with a zigzag down the middle and its bright yellow and black striped body, but all Mom wanted to know was,

"That thing can't escape from that bucket, can it?"

"Of course not," I said, which proved to be completely untrue. So this HUGE spider was loose somewhere in our house, but that night I saw it right above my head as I lay in bed. It had laid an egg sack, and I thought, "Man, what a great trade! Tons of spiders for one lousy toad!" But wouldn't you know it, my mother did not see it that way at all. The next day while I was at school, she told me both the spider and the egg sack ran away. I was sure she meant "down the toilet," but she assurred me they were outside. She wouldn't tell me where, however. She did not want any chance of a spider recovery operation!

I am not nearly as into spiders and bugs now, but I am still a charter member of the "Spider Relocation Program" and will catch every spider, no matter how big and ugly, and let it go outside rather than kill it.

Famous Hat