Spiders Are Worse Than Dogs (part1)

I almost died this morning. The previous sentence is in NO way an exaggeration of any sort. I quite literally heard Jesus say welcome home and had that moment when your entire life flashes before your eyes. (if you haven't ever had that moment it is kind of a disappointment as it only has your life in the past not what is in the future) What's even worse is that the majority of the time I had almost died I didn't even realize my life was in danger.

I woke up at 6:20 AM just like every other day. Nothing special about it other than the fact that my phone was going crazy vibrating from Twitter messages. After I read all my tweets I decided I had enough time to lay in bed and decide whether I truly needed a shower or not. If you know me at all then this should be the first sign to you that I was going to have an off morning. I am the kinda guy that will not miss a shower. Ever. While my mind was debating if I needed a shower or not, Mother was wondering why she did not hear the shower running now ten minutes after I woke up. Mother came in my room and made it very clear to me that whether I thought I needed a shower or not I would be getting one. So out of bed I crawled and into the bathroom.



While I love taking showers, I absolutely despise pre-shower rituals. In an effort to save money, Father likes to keep the house rigidly cold during the winter/spring and suffocatingly hot during the summer/fall. So every morning I do the same thing. I jump out of bed from my warm covers as fast as I can and sprint to the bathroom. (it is unbelievable how toned this sprint has made my calves) when I get to the bathroom I immediately turn the shower on as hot as it goes slam the door closed and start to dance in an attempt to keep my blood moving. Since I do not sleep in a full outfit, moving my blood does not keep me warm unfortunately. So every morning I become agitated with my lack of warmness and either throw on dirty clothes lying on the bathroom floor (I know that's gross but I am about to take a shower and then I will be clean again) or grab a towel and start creating friction with it on my back to warm me up.

When there is finally a considerable amount of steam covering the mirror it is time for me to begrudgingly take off my clothes. Somehow the knowledge that I will soon be in the scalding hot water doesn't make me any more excited to bare my skin to the cold elements but I do it anyway and jump in the shower. Finally warmth. On most days I will stand there for about ten to fifteen minutes just thawing my body.

About halfway through my thawing process I made a huge mistake. I looked to the shower curtain and noticed a spot near my head. My first thought:

Gross! Mold grew in the shower while I was gone to Mexico!

I continued to de-freeze when I noticed the mold moving. Believe it or not, it is not as exciting as you would think it is to find animate mold. Yet again, if the dog had been in the shower with me, he would have tackled me and ate my face off because my high pitched scream. (if you don't know what I am talking about, follow the link here. Trust me, it is worth it) Just in case the (what turned out to be a) giant spider didn't hear my scream the first time, I screamed again, this time waking Sister from her beauty sleep and alerting everybody in the household that their lives indeed were in danger.

Me, being the incredibly brave and valiant person that I am, decided that warning the rest of my family via screaming was not sufficient enough to tell them that we would surely perish a terrible slow painful death if we did not eradicate this pestilence from existence. So I had nothing else to do other than warn them in person. Without drying off I threw the curtain back (a feat of itself as if you remember correctly the rabid spider was actually ON the curtain) jumped out of the spider infested shower, threw my towel haphazardly around my waist (I just typed "waste" and had to correct it...) and ran. For some reason I didn't stop at Sister's door. (I guess I wasn't as worried about her well-being as I should've been) This was the second sign I would have a weird day. Sister is a daredevil. Anytime that I am in peril of being viciously mauled and having my intestines torn out by a spider she is always the first one to step up to the face of danger and spit in it. If I had to describe Sister in five words, I would use the words "spider-killer" and "vengeance-seeker" among the five. (I would also probably use the word "modest" but that is for a totally different reason)

But I didn't stop to notify Sister of my plight. Instead I kept running - drenching the carpet with my dripping body the whole way. If spiders can track by water scent (which I'm almost positive they can) then they will have no trouble finding me with the amount of water I left behind. As I made it to the kitchen which is half way to where Mother was, I made a huge mistake of not slowing down. I rounded the corner, feet still dripping wet and slipped and fell flat on my butt, bouncing my head off the ground. I didn't let that slow me though. There were lives to save! Lives that included mine! I didn't have time to grab my towel and re-secure it around my waist. I jumped to my feet and tore across the kitchen to my mothers bathroom only realizing upon arrival I should cover myself as best as I could with my hand. The following is an (almost) factual conversation that took place standing in Mother's bathroom:

Mother: Why are you naked? 

Me: Wha-? Never mind! It's not important! We're all about to get rabies and die!

Mother: .......

Me: Are you just going to stand there and let it happen?!

Mother: I'm still not sure why you're naked and not dried off. Are you done with your shower?

Me: Not yet. But that isn't important! There's a very high probability that if you don't follow me now I won't live to see your grandchildren! 

 (in retrospect I realize that her grandchildren would be my children and if I died, she wouldn't have any grandchildren for me to miss seeing)

Mother: I'm trying to get ready what do you want?

Me: Follow! Now!

Reluctantly she followed and I explained to her on the way (after I grabbed my towel from the kitchen floor and in between her yelling at me about her drenched carpet - which trust me I am just as worried about as her since I don't want the spiders to be able to find me) about how I almost got eaten alive by a spider the size of my foot. When we got to the bathroom the shower was still running and the curtain was somehow closed again. Here we had another conversation.

Mother: If you're not in the shower why is it still running?

Me:  SPIDER! *pointing rigidly at the shower*

Mother: Right. Where is it?

Me: On the shower curtain!

Mother: I don't see it.

Me: INSIDE of the shower curtain!

Mother proceeded to open the shower curtain and she took the time to turn off the water before she looked for the spider. What a trooper. Only problem is that by the time I had ran, fell, ran more, alerted Mother, gotten back into the bathroom, and she had turned off the water, the spider was gone. Spiders are sneaky. Especially the rabid kind. Mother now thinks I am crazy and decides it is time for her to finish getting ready. She instructs me to get back into the shower as we now have only fifteen minutes before I have to leave.

I quickly learned that stepping back into a possibly spider infested shower is much harder than stepping into a warm shower when I am cold. Once in the shower I wasted no time thawing - instead I went straight to detoxing my body. Unfortunately I was already traumatized so anytime I would close my eyes or turn around, I knew there was a giant rabid spider somewhere on and/or near me. I decided the only way to continue my shower would be to keep my eyes open and perpetually spin while cleaning myself. Do you have any idea how hard it is to shampoo with your eyes open? Its rather hard. When you add the element of spinning it makes it nearly impossible to keep shampoo out of your eyes.

A normally twenty minute shower was accomplished in forty minutes this morning and a evil spider infected with rabies escaped the clutches of death. My morning was not a win.

Although I did also momentarily evade death...therefore I win too.

**UPDATE:  As I was writing another post that you can find here, a miniature version of the spider crawled across my leg. I almost threw my computer across the car as I typed.

**UPDATE2: After a very paranoid shower this morning, Sister was pleased to inform me that she had found and slain the spider while I was gone yesterday.

**UPDATE3: Early this morning I hear what sounds like somebody running through the house screaming and then falling before my mother shows up in my bedroom frantic. (yes she was fully clothed) She then proceeded to shout "Quick! Get the hair off my shirt! It's going to eat me!!" Little does she know, joke's on her. Hair can't eat skin. It can simply taste really gross when you get it in your mouth.


Continue to part2 here.