The Perils of an Arachnophopic Wife

My wife is mega-scared of spiders.  I usually have a policy of letting spiders remain alive in my home-  provided they stay in the corners nobody uses and eats pesky bugs like mosquitoes and houseflies.  But if they get out in the open, they must be squished, which is my wife’s policy.

Last night, after the baby was asleep in his crib, my wife and I were lounging together on the couch, waiting for Fred Thompson to announce his candidacy on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  Suddenly she jumped up and exclaimed “Oh my god, what is that thing??!”  She was pointing a trembling finger at a crawling spider that was about 8 feet up the wall slowly heading toward the top of the cathedral ceilings.  The spider was perhaps one centimeter in diameter.  She would tell you it was six inches across, wearing a clown suit with sirens.

She handed me a notepad of paper to use to squash it and pushed me toward the critter, because, besides carrying out the trash, killing spiders is the second most important duty I have in the house.  I stood and sized up the spider and realized I would have to jump to kill it.  Just then she asked me if I needed a footstool.  I turned to look at her sarcastically, because even though I’m white, I can jump up and squish a bug at the eight foot mark.  When I looked back, the spider was gone.

And she realized it was gone too.  Not gone, as it had run four feet away gone-  gone as it had obviously jumped from the wall gone.  That meant a couple of things-  first we were dealing with a jumping spider.  If there is anything that creeps my wife out more than regular spiders, its spiders that can jump several feet, like for instance, from the ground to her knees if she was wearing a short skirt.  Secondly, the spider could have jumped into my hair since I was well within its leaping range.

I dismissed the notion that the spider was in my hair.  It was much more likely that it was on the carpet or in the nearby drapes, and I was scouring those locations looking for the eight-legged fiend.  My wife had by now crossed the room and was standing on a chair, distressed that a spider that could jump was in the same room with her and her bare feet.  As my search on the floor was proving to be fruitless, I began to have a suspicion that the spider was maybe in my hair.

I lowered my head so my wife could see to top of my hair and began to walk toward her.  “Will you make sure its not in my hair?  Just look for me, you don’t have to kill it, just knock it out of there if you find it.”

She squealed and backed up into a corner of the dining room telling me to get away from her.  She wanted nothing whatsoever to do with me or my possibly-spider-infested head.  She was actually writhing in disgust at the idea of touching my head.

I was not at all pleased.  I didn’t think a spider was in my hair, but dammit, if I needed her help to get one out, she shouldn’t just flat out refuse!  “You took an oath!” I reminded her.  “For better or worse!  I think worse would be classified as me standing here with a spider in my hair and you not helping me to get it out!”  I finally went to the bathroom and searched my hair myself.  No spiders were there, but at least I know where my wife draws the line when it comes to portions of our marital promises to each other.

She suggested that we look under the couch.  I was to lift the heavy piece of furniture while she stood by with the notepad to squash the spider if she spotted it.  I lifted the couch and the spider ran out toward my wife, and then she screamed and ran away, leaving me there holding a couch.  “It charged me!” she declared.  I put the couch down and squished the spider with my sock foot.